


The Fourth Estate

by Chronolith



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hand Jobs, Homestuck References, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Masturbation, Military Training, Multi, Multimedia, Non-Human Genitalia, Not Canon Compliant, Oral Sex, POV Multiple, Playlist, Political Shenanigans, Polyamory, Porn with Feelings, Slow Burn, Tender Sex, Unreliable Narrator, Vaginal Sex, spy games, stupid sniper tricks, theoretical physics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2019-08-09 06:57:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 156,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16445003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chronolith/pseuds/Chronolith
Summary: "There are three estates in Parliament but in the Reporters' Gallery yonder there sits a Fourth Estate more important far than them all. It is not a figure of speech or witty saying, it is a literal fact, very momentous to us in these times." -- Edmund Burke (1729-1797)The Fourth Estate: a segment of society that wields the soft but momentous power of public opinion despite its lack of formal recognition within the political system.Or, in the aftermath of Sendak's invasion and fall, Earth tries to find its political equilibrium.(multimedia fic following the Paladins & the MFE-Ares pilots post-season 7)





	1. (who tells your story)

**Author's Note:**

> I have a semi-regular update schedule that's generally 'sometime over the weekend depending on how the stars align'.

#### Meet Earth’s New Defenders

Earlier this morning, Lt. Commander Takashi Shirogane, Captain of the MFE-Atlas, gave a rousing and emotional speech memorializing the sacrifices of the brave men and women who liberated earth from Galra dictator, Sendak, leader of the Galra faction the Flame of Purification. Standing before the mysterious Lions of Voltron, Lt. Commander Shirogane applauded the bravery and commitment of the United Earth Military Services (UEMS) during the three-year-long occupation.

[Image: _the Lions of Voltron stand arrayed behind Lt. Commander Shirogane as he addresses a mixed-species crowd. A set of portraits with Admiral Evangeline Sanda’s in a place of prominence are arranged on his left side._ ]

Lt. Commander Shirogane called upon all of humanity to be a beacon of hope in a universe ravaged by the 10,000 year long imperialistic campaign of the now-fracturing Galra Empire.

_Click for more._

_This is the first articles introducing the Paladins of Voltron and the pilots of the MFE-Ares squadron. Stay updated with our omni-tool app or follow us on the WCN!_

Related stories in War  & Politics: 
  1. The UEMS Conspiracy: Earth On The Brink of Militarism?
  2. The Man Who Will Not Die: Lt. Commander Takashi Shirogane
  3. The Blades of Mamora: The Enemy in Our Midst?
  4. “We are all the Defenders of the Universe!” Sam Holt’s Desperate Plea for Public Support
  5. The Displaced, Disowned, and Dishonored: How Do We Treat Galra-collaborators After The War?



* * *

Quiz: Which Defender Are You?

##### You Got: Yellow Paladin Tsuyoshi ‘Hunk’ Garrett

[Image: _Hunk Garrett kneels balanced on the tattered wing of a downed Galra fighter. His shirt sleeves are rolled back to show off his impressive forearms as he points to something out of frame. There’s an oil smudge mark high on his cheek and a heavy industrial impact wrench in one hand._ ]

You might get scared—terrified even—but it won’t stop you. It won’t even slow you down. You’re a rock to your friends, the solid ground upon which they can build. You’re quietly sarcastic, a bit of a mother hen, and give the best hugs of your friends group. You might stress bake.

Did you know you can sign up for a GalaxyFeed Community account and make your own GalaxyFeed posts? Get started here!

* * *

Shiro flashes a quick smile at Colleen as she slides into a chair next to him, mug of coffee gently steaming in her hands. It’s become something of a routine for them to greet the morning together as the two earliest risers of the Garrison (assuming Sam or Pidge hadn’t once again forgotten the concept of sleep entirely in favor pursuing some project) and Shiro’s found he’s come to look forward to the quiet mornings together. 

“Reading the gossip rags?” Colleen asks with obvious amusement.

“There are quizzes you can take to discover which Defender of the Universe you are,” he says with a grin and shows her, “I got Hunk.”

Colleen sputters out a delighted laugh and takes the tablet from him to poke at it herself.

“I don’t think we can ignore this much longer,” Shiro comments idly. Colleen shoots him a sharp look, not at all fooled by his casual tone. “People are starting to come to their own conclusions about things. And not all of those conclusions are pleasant.”

She makes a soft hum of agreement around her coffee mug and then sighs. “Mitchell is, of course, hesitant to engage what he considers bottom feeding socialites and gossips with nothing better to do.”

Shiro laughs. “Those are also opinion leaders, unfortunately.”

Colleen raises an eyebrow. “You want to go on the talk show circuit?”

He makes a face before he can stop himself and she knocks the back of her knuckles against his hand in silent apology. “You know Lance has been advocating to get his social media accounts back, right?” he asks. “He’s getting pretty insistent.”

“You think the UEMS should allow it?” Colleen replies with a thoughtful little tilt to her head. It's so like Pidge's little gesture of contemplation that it startles Shiro for a moment. Daughter like mother in the most innocuous of moments. 

“I don’t think we are going to get much choice in the matter,” Shiro says honestly. “Lance might be the loudest, but he’s not the only one arguing to get their accounts back. A lot of people see it as a major return to,” Shiro waves a hand in an all-encompassing gesture, “normalcy.”

“Evidence that we aren’t under a military rule directed by a shadowy cabal of aliens and their sympathizers?” Colleen suggests, and he gives her a rueful nod. Colleen turns her mug in her hands pensively. “You know, Ina used to have an account dedicated entirely to her photography on the WCN. She took lovely pictures of the most mundane things. I never thought the FFR-31 Sylph was beautiful, but she found a way.”

“I think Lance took selfies with every single alien species we came across,” Shiro says with a grin. “Even the ones that were giant telepathic spiders.”

“ _Spiders_ , remind me to skip that one.” Colleen shudders delicately as Shiro fights not to laugh, before cocking her head to the side. “You used to have a little art blog, if I remember correctly.”

Shiro can feel his cheeks heat and he resists the urge to rub at them. “I took some pictures. Sometimes,” he concedes. “They were never very good.”

Colleen hums thoughtfully again and thankfully doesn’t say anything. She turns her mug around in the opposite direction. “I’ll talk to Sam,” she tells Shiro. “We’ll work on Mitchell, but,” she shrugs, “you know how he is.”

“Stubborn,” Shiro agrees.

“All of you are,” Colleen says. “You wouldn’t be here, if you weren’t.”

Shiro finds he can’t argue with that.

* * *

#### TRANSCRIPT OF SNN SPECIAL REPORT WITH HIBIKI KANZAKI

HIBIKI KANZAKI: Good evening, dear listeners, it’s just turn 10pm and we’re here to discuss the ongoing attempt at media censorship by the United Earth Military Systems. Not only are they refusing to allow press free access of information, they have refused to allow their own pilots freedom of expression by continuing to restrict their access to social media. Please stay tuned as we discuss this in greater depth, also, feel free to send in your comments and questions during the show at….

* * *

Return of the Fourth Estate  
wcn.gbc.com/return-of-the-fourth-estate  
2 months ago – In a sigh heard round the globe the Galaxy Garrison launched millions of micro-satellites supporting the improved, quantum-entangled World Communication Network…

Silence on the Desert Front  
wcn.globalnewsnetwork.com…/silence-on-the-desert-front  
1 month ago – Despite the return on the World Communication Network (and with it the plague of social media) the continued silence from the United Earth Military Systems raises suspicions that…

Leaked Pictures Reveal Tensions Between Old and New Defenders!  
wcn.dailyreview.com…/pop/…/leaked-pictures-reveal…  
9 hours ago – Much to the chagrin of UEMS command leaked pictures of Black Paladin Keith Kogane moments away from attacking lt. James Griffin, squadron leader of the MFE-Ares….

* * *

roundab00t reblogged from sequencefairy

roundab00t posted:

okay, but consider:

[Image: _Keith Kogane leaning into James Griffin’s personal space, fists clenched and a snarl showing off an impressive set of canines. His eyes might be glowing. Griffin’s head is cocked to the side, a smile sliding into a sneer twisting his face. Lance Serrano has a hand over his face and Ryan Kinkade appears to be captured in mid-sigh._ ]

Rival leader hate-fucking.

*

halcyon-quintants:

…that’s one interpretation.

*

solarislion:

lol. look at Kinkade’s ‘why’ expression

*

cupids'oof:

oh. they fuckin’

*

sequencefairy:

b00t! Where did you get this picture?

*

roundab00t:

I will die before I reveal my sources.

15,892 notes  
Tagged: #leave me alone to my sin, #you know Kogane wants to w r e c k him, #Paladins of Voltron, #MFE-Ares pilots, #our brave defenders, #we might be in trouble

* * *

Keith blinks slowly as he considers the post, his expression goes curiously blank before he turns to Shiro and says, low and serious, “I am going to kill Griffin.”

“You can fucking try, Kogane,” Griffin says with a smile that could be sweet if it didn’t show all his teeth.

Ryan and Shiro sigh in sync.

“Yeah,” Lance drawls from where he’s slouched across one of the uncomfortable Garrison lounge couches. Keith fights to not bristle at the mocking tone. “I don’t think that would help your image there, buddy.”

Commander Iverson clears his throat and seems somewhat chagrined when it only gets Keith to redirect his glare. He’s _trying_ to rein himself in. He _is_ but he can feel Griffin’s smug amusement and it makes his eye twitch. 

“Setting aside the speculation on the current state of, ah,” Iverson pauses as if to consider his words carefully for potential matches that might set off the obvious powder keg that’s Keith’s seething fury, “relationships between members of UEMS and the Voltron Coalition—“ Iverson stares at Keith until he settles with a hissing sigh, “the real question is how the picture was obtained and leaked.”

“Someone has a fan club,” Lance sings, and Keith can feel his eye twitch again in dangerous warning.

“Lance,” Veronica and Pidge sigh in unison. Allura covers her mouth, but her eyes twinkle, completely undercutting any rebuke anyone else might levy. Even Keith can see how Lance basks like a cat in a sunbeam under her attention.

Lance sits up and leans forward with his elbows on his knees. “No, seriously, there are fan clubs for, like, all of us,” Lance looks up at his sister from under his bangs. “Remember when Iddure really, really, _really_ got into that one singer and we had to stage an intervention? It’s hitting that level with people. I’ve been tracking it; if you want to see.”

Veronica makes a face. “Of all the things that I had anticipated, this was not among the potential problems—though I should have seen this coming.”

“If there is a security breach,” Iverson starts again.

“Someone is selling pictures of the Paladins and the MFE-Ares team,” Veronica says and then shrugs as Iverson raises an eyebrow at her. “It’s the logical conclusion, sir,” she says apologetically. “We just need find a way to … _discourage_ such behavior.”

“We could always regulate media coverage and the dissemination of information,” Iverson suggests. “At least until things are calmer and more settled.” 

“With all due respect, sir,” Shiro interjects quickly as Pidge and Matt get identical indignant expressions at the idea, “I don’t think that trying to control the press, particularly over something as trivial as idle speculation—” he pauses to turn an impossibly flat expression on Griffin and Keith as they hiss in unison “—is a strategy that will work out well for UEMS.”

“Especially since we are already getting accusations of attempting a military coup in the aftermath of the Galra invasion, Mitchell,” Sam says quietly.

“That’s just a bunch of hysterical Chicken Little dipshits who hated the Garrison even before the invasion,” Iverson argues with an aggrieved tone. 

“Mitch,” Colleen says quietly, and Iverson subsides with grumble.

“If I might interject?” Allura asks. She folds her hands in her lap at Sam’s nod. “While Shiro and Sam have done an exceptional job at public outreach, they are the only members of joint defense forces that the media has had an opportunity to meet. It makes sense that the public would be,” she pauses as if searching for the appropriate word, “ _curious_. Feed the curiosity and then the market for, erm,” she eyes Keith and he tries not to glower at her, “candid photographs should evaporate.”

Veronica cocks her head to the side, her expression suddenly thoughtful. “You mean if we don’t give them a story, they’re going to create it.”

Allura nods. “Part of my education as royalty included public relations and managing one’s image—people are curious at their heart. If you give them an answer before they think to ask the question you can,” she makes a little guiding gesture with her hands, “shape the conversation.”

“We need to control the narrative,” Veronica says, her gaze sharp and contemplative.

Lance sits up straight, eyes alight with helpful eagerness. “We could do that ourselves no problem.”

Keith scoffs loudly, “Yeah, how? Are _you_ going to write articles for the news blogs?”

Lance rolls his eyes and sighs. “Uh. No dude. If people want pictures, let’s give them pictures. I’ve got a backlog of at least four hundred I can have posted inside an hour.”

“No one is gonna want to see your stupid selfies, Lance,” Keith snaps.

“Actually,” Griffin says thoughtfully and Keith glares daggers at him as Lance visibly lights up, “given that people are willing to buy pictures of really unfortunate quality, I think they will.”

Shiro makes a thoughtful sound and Keith turns a wounded look on him. “These selfies,” Shiro says slowly without looking at Keith, “these are the ones you’ve taken with our allies?”

“Yep~!” Lance replies, making the ‘p’ pop with a grin. “And with every planet we liberated,” his face falls, “though they might not be free anymore.”

“Yeah,” Pidge drawls, “maybe don’t include those.”

“But definitely include all the ones with our allies,” Griffin says, making Pidge’s eyebrows jump and Keith glare harder. “Especially the ones that haven’t made it to Earth yet.”

Shiro nods. “It’s a good idea,” he says, still ignoring Keith’s wounded stare, “people are scared and they’re distrustful of anything too alien. As Princess Allura said, we need to guide the conversation and if social media accounts are how we do it,” he gives a little helpless shrug, “then that’s how we do it.”

“I’m not doing it,” Keith snaps, “we’re _Paladins_ of _Voltron_ , not a variety show, and we still have a universe to save.”

“Yeah,” Lance says and there’s a venom in his tone that has the rest of the paladins staring at the table while the MFE pilots look between them like spectators at a tennis match. “We all know how well you like being part of _shows_.”

Keith jerks at the unsubtle reminder, but before he can say anything Hunk puts a hand over his forearm and squeezes just a little as he says: “Lance,” voice soft with disappointment. “That was different.”

“Was it?” Lance asks and then seems to remember where they are with a full body jerk. He shrugs one shoulder, suddenly dismissive, “whatever dude, Keith just doesn’t want to do it because his account would be, like, a million pictures of his knife or something.”

“Well,” Sam says brightly, “no one has to have a WCN account if they don’t want one.”

Iverson clears his throat loudly and they subside. “Any pictures you post will need to be vetted,” he says sternly and glares around the table at the surge of protest. “At least any pictures of allies we might not be willing to reveal yet. And you need to remember that you represent the United Earth Military, Voltron, and the hope of the entire universe.”

Keith tries to ignore the cold ball of dread forming at the pit of his belly as he joins the chorus of ‘yes, sir’s that echo around the room. Shiro catches his hand under the table and gives it a squeeze. When he looks up Shiro cocks his head and smiles—it’s the same smile he’s been giving Keith since he stole his car and Shiro still refused to back down. The one that said everything was fine because he’s here.

Keith just wishes he could believe it.

* * *

#### Violent Delinquent Leads Voltron: Is Kogane Fit to Save the Universe?

Recent pictures of Keith Kogane, Black Paladin and apparent leader of the Paladins of Voltron, moments before an altercation with James Griffin, squadron leader of the MFE-Ares pilots and media darling, have caused some to question whether Kogane has the temperament for such an important leadership role. Revelations of Kogane’s past juvenile delinquency, his expulsion from the Galaxy Garrison, and his visibly contentious relationship with other Paladins have raised concerns.

[Image: _A split screen picture of Keith Kogane as a teenager, clearly from a police lineup, and then in full paladin armor with his helmet tucked under one arm. In both pictures he is glowering at the camera._ ]

Lt. Commander Shirogane’s explanation of how the Black Paladin is selected—a poorly understood mystic rite where the paladin is ‘chosen’ by the Lion—failed to reassure key world leaders. Some have openly wondered if Kogane’s Galra heritage may result in a violently unstable personality.

_Click for more._

Related stories in War  & Politics: 
  1. The Balmera: Blessing or Curse?
  2. MFE-Ares Pilots Give Impromptu Airshow to City’s Delight
  3. Rave Reviews for Human-Galran Fusion Kitchen Show
  4. Voltron Coalition: Rebels, Allies, Ourselves?



* * *

[image: _Lance Serrano beams up at the camera squashed between two aliens who seem vaguely feminine with long, curling horns, sweeping tendrils that cascade down their shoulders, and six, multi-fractal eyes each that sparkle with delight. He’s taught them to flash peace signs—though one hasn’t quite gotten the hang of it and the gesture looks more obscene than victorious._ ]

34,009 likes  
deadshotLance

Verax’tz and Leyand’xr from planet Illex’tren say hi! #adayinapaladinlife #kickingassandtakingselfies #alienbabes

View 23,329 comments:

griffinwings: @deadshotLance did you seriously name yourself after a comic book character? A comic book super _villain_?

PidgeontheGreenPaladin: @griffinwings he likes to think he’s badass 

gravityforgottowork: do they really have six eyes?

ResistanceisButyl: yep! The planet has two suns of different electromagnetic wavelengths, so they evolved a complex visual sensory array capable of processing seventeen more spectrums of light than the human eye! They also have double eyelids that glow.

deadshotLance: @griffinwings @PidgeontheGreenPaladin Excuse you. I _am_ badass. And no, the name isn’t from a comic book. It’s the title of a biography of Lyudmila Pavlinchenko, okay? 

PidgeontheGreenPaladin: @deadshotLance I refuse to believe that you know how to read.

RyanKinkadeOfficial: @deadshotLance I read that. It’s an excellent history but I maintain that _Lady Death_ has a more complete account of her life after the war.

deadshotLance: @RyanKinkadeOfficial you are my only friend now

deadshotLance: @RyanKinkadeOfficial I read that one too, but it works even worse as a user name—though I did think about it.

RyanKinkadeOfficial: @deadshotLance I did too

therealRizavi: @griffinwings oh no, now there’s two of them

* * *

uwutronn reblogged from zekxtan

zekxtan posted:

everyone says that there are five paladins of voltron but I say: lies, lies and mass delusion. have you ever seen the green lion with your own eyes? the green lion does not exist, they’ve been putting fluoride in the water.

[GIF: _General Jack Ripper putting an arm around Captain Mandrake, a cigar dangling from his mouth. “Vodka, that’s what they drink, never water.”_ ]

*

bicon-voltron:

pidge is a hakawai. Confirmed.

*

roundab00t:

on no account will a galra drink water. and not without good reason.

*

zekxtan:

(you understand me)

*

roundab00t:

[Gif: _Major Kong straddling the nuclear bomb waving his Stetson hat wildly as the bomb falls through the clouds towards the base below. Caption reads: “yee. haw.”_ ]

*

uwutronn:

pidge is real. she kissed me behind Verpit Sal’s at 3am.

982 notes  
Tagged: #the cryptic 5th member of the paladins, #the green paladin, #pidge, #i would die for her

* * *

**PidgeontheGreenPaladin (official) opened a direct message with uwutronn!**

please don’t die for me. it would make me sad. :(

**uwutronn replied to PidgeontheGreenPaladin (official)!**

_AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH_

* * *

Veronica taps Pidge’s shoulder until she looks up, glasses glinting despite the lack of any sort of applicable light source. Veronica raises an eyebrow, “Generally,” she says thoughtfully, “I am supposed to keep the on-going dumpster fire that is you Paladins from communicating directly with the public, but so far this cryptid persona plus occasionally direct messaging people out of the blue is making you the underground favorite.”

Pidge favors her with a smug smile. “I know,” she says. “These are my people; I know how they work.”

“That,” Veronica replies with a weary sigh, “fills me with a new sense of trepidation that I frankly didn’t think was possible.”

She almost expects the youngest paladin to smirk up at her, but Pidge leans back, suddenly serious, to stare up into Veronica's face. “They won’t really try to censor the media, will they?” 

Veronica blinks, reminded suddenly of exactly how young Pidge had been when she’d left—how young she still is. It makes something twinge painfully around her heart. Who were they, she wondered, to send near-children to war? She drops into a sloppy cross-legged seat next to the girl and props her chin on one hand. Pidge meets her stare for stare, solemn and just a touch nervous. She is not, Veronica decides, someone to feed bullshit or comforting lies to.

“They might,” she says simply.

Pidge glares at her for a moment, glares at her laptop for longer, and then stares at the doors to the server room with quickly blinking eyes. “They _can’t_.”

“It would be logistically complicated,” Veronica concedes.

Pidge makes a short, sharp gesture with one hand. “No. I mean,” she says—stuttering under the force of her emotions. “I mean. I mean. I only ended up a Paladin because the Garrison _lied_. It was—” Pidge snaps her mouth shut so hard Veronica can hear her teeth click. She looks mutinous. “We didn’t spend three years fighting the Galra with semi-sentient, mystical space cats to come back and have our own damned people act the same way.”

Veronica can feel her eyebrows trying to join her hairline. “I sense an ultimatum impending,” she says lightly. “Let’s hear it.”

“Not an ultimatum,” Pidge says, and her eyes are flinty even as her voice sounds suspiciously wet. “A promise. If the Garrison—if the whole of the UE military—tries to hide information the world should know, I _won’t_ just sit idly by.”

Veronica chucks her under her chin lightly and grins when Pidge snaps her teeth at offending extremity. “Daughter like mother, then.”

* * *

Quiz: Which Defender Are You?

##### You Got: Lt. Commander Takashi Shirogane

[Image: _Takashi Shirogane stands at a podium addressing a small crowd of students who are clearly hanging on his every word. His eyes are bright with conviction and there’s a faint suggestion of a grin to his expression. He looks every inch a hero and there is something exceptionally reassuring about the straight line of his shoulders._ ]

You’re kind, loyal, and every inch a natural leader. People look to you without hesitation when things get rough. You hold yourself to higher standards than anyone can imagine, and you meet them. You are probably immortal.

Did you know you can sign up for a GalaxyFeed Community account and make your own GalaxyFeed posts? Get started here!

* * *

(5) News Updates in _War & Politics_

1 day ago  
The New Battle Ground: The Paladins and Their PR Offensive

12hrs ago  
Holt Siblings to Lead Redesign of MFE-Ares Fighter Jets Project

6hr ago  
UEMS & Voltron Coalition Unveil Plans for Joint-Command Compound: ‘The Terminus’

3hrs ago  
Defenders Rebuke Claims Kogane Unfit to Lead

50min ago  
Kogane Storms Out of Press Conference Amid Questions About Galra Heritage

* * *

[thumbnail: _Hunk and Sal stand to one side watching with expressions of fascinated horror, as if they were watching a particularly graphic slasher holo. Romelle holds a cleaver the length of her own forearm and an intense expression of concentration. The collection of vegetable matter on the counter in front of her may never be the same._ ]

##### Verpit Sal and Paladin Hunk’s Kitchen Adventures with Surprise Guest Romelle!

2,930, 234 views

13,109 comments:

 **frankexchangeofviews – 2 months ago**  
are all alteans Like This or is Romelle a special case?  
210 likes  
Hide replies ^

 **confusedandinneedofcoffee – 2 months ago**  
A special case of AWESOME  
4.3 likes

 **outsidethenormalconstraints – 2 months ago**  
This is it. We’ve found her. The manic pixie dream girl in her natural environment.  
1.9K likes

* * *

Keith tries not to glare at Veronica when she drops into a chair beside him and sighs at him as if he has personally disappointed her, her future children and her cow. His stunted and malformed sense of self-preservation blares at him that she is not a person to be messed with. (Although he will cherish for the rest of his natural life James Griffin’s expression when she just covered Griffin’s mouth and spoke over him during the last Morning Report. The _rest_ of his _life_.) She stares at him over the tops of her steepled fingers until he squirms, just a little.

So much about Lance suddenly makes sense now that’s he’s met Veronica. So much.

“Have you ever considered just … not talking,” she says apropos absolutely nothing as far as Keith can see.

He can’t help the frustrated growl that rumbles out of him. Press conferences were _not_ a thing he’d agreed to when he finally caved to being the Black Paladin. He wants to protest on both general and specific principles. Specific principles being: fuck this, fuck that, _fuck them_.

“Yeah,” Veronica drawls. “Don’t do that either.”

“As much as it pains me to say this,” Lance says from where he’s got Kinkade’s sniper rifle spread out around him in pieces, “it’s not really Keith’s fault. They won’t fucking let up with the entire “half-Galra waiting to betray us all” bullshit.”

“Ryan will murder you if you lose any of those pieces,” Veronica warns her brother, but her lips curl in a fond, almost doting, smile. “He loves that rifle better than he loves literally anything else on this planet.”

Lance waves a small rod at her. “Not true. He loves the little macaroon things Hunk makes. Every drawing Ina has ever done. And James. Also, I’m right and you know I’m right.”

“When did Kinkade give you his rifle,” Keith wants to know. That seems like a much safer topic than any impending media appearances and their attendant humiliation.

Lance shrugs one shoulder dismissively. “We’ve been, you know, hanging out. Shooting the shit. He thought it was a good idea I learned how a gun that doesn’t automatically reload or clean itself works and gave me this to fuck about with.”

Veronica huffs out a laugh. “Now I know you must be one of his favorite people. He threatened, very politely, to break Iverson’s fingers if he touched Ryan’s rifle. That thing is his baby.”

“Stop changing the subject,” Lance says as he shoves the rod down the long barrel of the gun—it makes a soft _shush-shush_ -ing sound and Lance’s eyes narrow into thoughtful slits as he peers at it. “You guys need to do something about this anti-alien sentiment that’s getting going. Nip that shit in the bud, Vero, before it blows up on all of us.”

“You sound like James,” Veronica complains. 

“Yeah, well,” Lance says as he sets aside the brush and pulls out a soft rag from Keith doesn’t even know where. The siblings seem to have completely forgotten he’s there. “He’s a smart dude, and he’s got a point. The media has been nicer to Allura than they are to Keith, but there’s a lot of the same, you know, low-key paranoid bullshit directed at her too.”

“Ah,” Veronica says slowly, drawing out the vowel as Lance pinks up. “Your true concern comes clear.”

“Shut up,” Lance grumbles as he starts reassembling the rifle, oiling each part as he goes. Keith notes how he refuses to look at Veronica and the blush that’s crept all the way up to his ears. “James and I are right—this is a problem and it needs to get fixed.”

Veronica leans back in her seat and hums thoughtful as she studies Keith. He doesn’t know what kind of expression his face is making as he stares back at her. She shakes her head like he’s done something funny. Keith wants to ask what she sees but he’s a little afraid of the answer. 

“When did you get so close to James?” Veronica asks—the question obviously startingly her brother as much as it startles Keith, “I didn’t think you had the time.”

“Enh,” Lance says as he snaps on another piece of Kinkade’s rifle and shrugs. “He’s, like, around a lot. We’ve been talking joint missions maybe—he’s got this idea of double sniper team since that first infiltration and retrieval mission went so well.” Lance doesn’t look up as he oils down the final part of Kinkade’s gun. “And we just, you know, talk.”

Keith stares down at the table and wonders if he’s missed something important. Wonders at the roil of discomfort burning low in his chest like acid reflux. When he looks up Veronica is watching him again. 

“About the press,” Veronica says with a curiously blank expression. She hasn’t looked away from Keith and he doesn’t know what to do with that either.

Lance lifts Kinkade’s rifle and stares down its sights before pulling a face and starting to dissemble it again. “About a lot of shit, but yeah about the press. Allura was upset after that last press conference. You know the one.”

Keith’s gaze snaps to the table because he _definitely_ knows the one. He’ll probably hear the reporter’s snide and insinuating questions in his dreams for weeks to come. It had taken all of his self-control to just walk out of the room rather than throw a chair.

“That could have gone better,” Veronica says, still watching Keith like a hawk.

“These things are only going to get worse until we do something about the underlying ‘human-first’ bullshit the press is trying to pull,” Lance says as he works the cleaning rod down the bore of the rifle. His ears are still pink. “We need to do some outreach, or something, about it.”

“I think I have an idea,” Veronica says. From the way she watches Keith, eyes sharp and thoughtful like he’s a new problem for her to solve. He thinks she might have a lot of ideas, and not just about the press.


	2. whisper campaign

#### Mega-Flex Exoskeleton-Ares Fighters Get a Revamp

Commander Samuel Holt announced earlier today that the MFE-Ares were getting an extensive redesign with the second-generation fighters due to see combat within the next three months. The current series of fighters, which protected Earth’s resistance forces in the three years between Sendak’s initial invasion and the arrival of the Paladins of Voltron, are a short-range flight class with limited offensive capacity.

[image: _An aesthetically pleasing shot of the MFE-Ares wing. The pale metal glows in the desert sun, marred by a deep groove that a technician works to buff out. James Griffin stands on the edge of the shot looking at something just off screen, expression pensive._ ]

“Allura of Altea has been critical to the MFE redesign project,” said Commander Samuel Holt in a short press conference, “as has been Coran Hieronymus Wimbleton Smythe. Their combined knowledge of Altean alchemy and technology has been essential to the development of new long-range flight capacity of the MFE-Ares.”

_click for more_

Related Stories in Science  & Technology: 
  1. Paladin Tsuyoshi ‘Hunk’ Garret to Lead Joint Human-Balmeran Engineering Project
  2. Wormhole Technology, Altean Alchemy, and Physics as We Knew It
  3. Holt Wonder Siblings Give Joint Presentation on Quantum Entangled Communications
  4. Ground-Breaking Ceremony for New Joint-Chief’s Compound Disrupted By Protesters



* * *

[Thumbnail: _Two Paladins stand behind a kitchen counter with matching stunned expressions. A Galra with an enormous old-fashioned chef’s hat stands behind them with a beaming smile. There’s frosting all over the counter, in one Paladin’s hair, splattered across their chests, and on the tip of the larger Paladin’s nose._ ]

##### Verpit Sal and Paladin Hunk’s Kitchen Adventures with Surprise Guest Black Paladin Keith!

5,093,184 views

21,237 comments:

 **yalltron – 2 days ago**  
Omfg Keith’s little “was it supposed to blow up?” was the cutest thing I have ever heard in MY ENTIRE LIFE. Someone protect him. (I know he could probably kill me with his pinky. But STILL. protect him.)  
5k likes  
Hide replies ^ 

**vehicroid – 2 days ago**  
The way he tackled Hunk to save him from exploding frosting! _aaaahhhh_ my _heart_

 **em|jammin – 2 days ago**  
He sounds so confused, poor baby.

 **distortedsophistry – 1 day ago**  
Hunk just looks so personally offended that it blew up. He’s a good cook. He knows how these things should work. He doesn’t deserve this.  
2.2k likes  
Hide replies ^

 **JessStansBlue – 1 day ago**  
I want to know _how_ Sal got it to blow up. Frosting does not. Normally. Explode.

 **feelingsaboutrobots – 1 day ago**  
You and Hunk both. 

**Jam – 20 hours ago**  
Can we talk about how proud and cute Sal was? Like, so pleased with his exploding murder cake.  
698 likes  
Hide replies ^

 **flowersforAres – 19 hours ago**  
He found a flaw in human earth cakes and he corrected it! I’m so proud of my big, purple, kitchen-disaster son.

* * *

roundab00t reblogged from redlion-bluelion

roundab00t posted:

To everyone saying trying to say that Keith is some sort of violent jerk I direct you to this:

[image: _Keith Kogane lies curled into a tiny ball, feet tucked underneath him, head pillowed against Takashi Shirogane’s shoulder, dead asleep. He’s bundled under a blanket, his hair a mess across his forehead and his mouth hangs slightly open. Shiro has a soft, fond smile as he looks at the camera. It’s clear he’s taken the picture with his prosthetic._ ]

*

higgsbosonforthemass:

he’s a soft boi

*

tinybutfierce:

let him Rest.

*

redlion-bluelion:

where did you _find_ it? I thought Keith was legit allergic to social media

roundab00t:

lt. Commander Shirogane has a WCN account. he doesn’t update it very often, but every time he does it is GOLD.

3,284 notes  
Tagged: #Paladins of Voltron #Keith Kogane #he’s a Good Boy #and i will fight anyone who disagrees #not in my house you fuckers

* * *

“I see you reactivated your old WCN account,” Colleen comments while Shiro is still trying to work out whether or not he’s already made himself a cup of coffee (and already lost it) or if he just dreamed it. He’s almost entirely positive the Garrison has gremlins that exist purely to steal his coffee mug before he’s quite awake enough to deal with it.

“Um?” He says with his typical eloquence.

She turns her tablet around and taps the picture of Keith napping on his shoulder. He can’t help the smile it pulls from him. “Oh, that,” he says, ignoring the way he can feel his cheeks heat, and shrugs, “it just seemed good moment to share.”

“One that happens to show Keith without his walls,” Colleen asks with an arched brow. “One that happens to show our prickly Black Paladin being, as his fans pointed out, ‘soft’?”

“Maybe,” he agrees, and he can’t help the impish smile or his own raised eyebrow. In their silent battle of insinuating eyebrows, hers, being the better groomed, win out. He ducks his head as she smirks at him. “People just need a different perspective on him. That’s all.”

Colleen swirls the dregs of her coffee in her mug without looking at him. When she does, Shiro can’t quite place her expression. “Your perspective.”

“I’m … not following your point,” he says carefully.

“You are not a stupid boy, Shiro,” she rebukes him gently. “Don’t act like it.”

“I’d also say I’m not a boy either,” he says mildly—testing to see if she’ll allow the change of topic.

Colleen sighs, tilts her head, and says, “You are all children,” she sounds impossibly tired. “Every one of you.” 

Shiro settles in next to her and offers her a fresh cup of coffee in apology. “It was Veronica’s idea, actually,” he says quietly. “But she has a point.”

“That does not surprise me,” Colleen says as she accepts the cup. “That girl is entirely too clever and sees far more than people realize.”

“I thought that was the norm with analysts,” Shiro says with a small grin, “the entire seeing more than people realize thing.”

“Don’t be cute,” she says tartly. “And as much as you and Hunk are doing for Keith’s public image, I’m worried it won’t be enough,” she makes a frustrated face, “the media seems very attached to their narrative.”

“We can only continue to do what we can do,” Shiro says philosophically and Colleen knocks her knuckles against his temple with a huff. He ducks his head to hide his grin.

“Don’t quote my husband at me,” she tells him with a mock-glare. “Most of the things that he said to you to sound wise and philosophical were from me anyway.”

“Oh,” says Shiro, “that’s why they always worked.”

“Flatterer,” she says with an alarmingly precise punch to his kidneys, but he thinks he spots a smile when she turns back to her tablet.

* * *

##### Are the Paladins of Voltron Right for Earth?

As the planet struggles to rebuild from the devastation wrought by Galra Tyrant Sendak, leader of the Flame of Unification, many are forced to consider the uncomfortable question that the Paladins of Voltron may not be benevolent protectors they seem to be. With the vast damage done to the globe’s infrastructure—particularly food production and housing—the sudden influx of aliens from the far reaches of space puts additional strain on systems that can scarce afford it. 

[image: _An aerial shot of an abandoned farming conglomeration. The farmland is pocked with debris and craters. The buildings gutted and machinery rusting._ ]

Some world leaders question whether Earth is the appropriate base for an intergalactic war with no clear mission or possible end. Others argue that MFE-Ares pilots are a sufficient deterrent and that the presence of the Paladins is a greater threat than benefit.

_Click for more._

Comments  
humanityUnited commented:  
these alien scumbags came here, blew up most of our planet, forced us to build a weapon that would blow up the rest, and now we’re supposed to just ‘trust’ that these five nutjobs in robot lions are going to protect us?? And two are aliens???? How about they get the fuck off our planet and go back to where they came from!! We don’t need any more of their ‘help.’  
210 likes

_click to join the discussion!_

* * *

#### TRANSCRIPT OF SNN SPECIAL REPORT WITH HIBIKI KANZAKI

HIBIKI KANZAKI: good evening gentle listeners! It’s just turned 10pm here and the desert is a quiet—unlike the most recent press conference with the Paladins of Voltron where it was revealed that Keith Kogane, the controversial half-Galra leader of the Paladins, had actually _left_ the Paladins immediately following their first failed attack on Zarkon. When reporters, including yours truly, tried to press Kogane for answers concerning his behavior, he stormed from the room. This evening we’ll talk about what little we do know of the current Galra political situation, Kogane’s divided loyalties, and the so-called Blade of Mamora…

* * *

##### YouVidGalaxy

You searched for: Princess Allura

About 3,921 results

##### Galaxy Garrison Alien Education Series: Alteans!

Galaxy Garrison  
6.8M Views  
3 Months Ago  
As the beacon for hope and peace in the universe, Earth welcomes our friends and allies from across the stars. This educational series will teach you about our allies’ cultures, language, history, and …

#####  Verpit Sal and Paladin Hunk’s Kitchen Adventures – ft. Princess Allura

Verpit Sal & Paladin Hunk Productions  
3.4M Views  
1 Month Ago  
This week Princess Allura teaches Verpit Sal & Paladin Hunk how to make Berxterian tarts! (and surprisingly nothing explodes, implodes, detonates, or otherwise catches on fire)

##### Altean Magic is WITCHCRAFT!!! Proof that ‘princess’ Allura will destroy the WORLD!!!!

killingtime  
2.4M Views  
2 Weeks Ago  
expose on ‘princess’ Allura’s magic and how its one of the seven signs of the universal apocalypse foretold by Aztec rune carvings.

* * *

Iverson slides into a seat between Sam and Colleen Holt looking like he hasn’t seen a bed in sixty years and, in fact, doesn’t expect to see a bed for another sixty. Colleen nudges a mug full of coffee to him with one hand and whispers, “Sam made it. I think it maybe melted the spoon.”

Her husband shoots her a mock offended look that quickly morphs to one of faint concern when Mitch downs the entire mug like a shot and reaches for Sam’s mug and downs that too.

“Should we stage an intervention?” Colleen asks as Mitch peers mournfully with his good eye at the bottom of his coffee mug.

“Is this all the coffee,” he asks rather than respond directly to the question. “All of it?”

“All that you are getting,” Sam replies. “If we give you any more we could be tried for negligent homicide when you finally have that catastrophic heat attack you’ve been courting for the past four years.”

Mitch snorts loudly. “Your golden children are going to give me that heart attack anyway. I might as well have the coffee.” 

“They’re your golden children as well,” Colleen says tartly, but she gets up to pour him another cup.

“No,” he denies as he takes it from her—when he makes a pleading expression at her, she hands him the creamer as well. “The MFE-Ares pilots are _my_ golden children and they are a sensible lot that don’t do things like tell world leaders ‘well, you aren’t dead, how about that’, or fall asleep during press conferences, or deck journalists.”

“Keith hasn’t decked a journalist,” Sam says, not even bothering to hide his amusement.

“Not yet, he hasn’t,” Mitch grumps. “We all know it’s a matter of time.”

“They do like to mob the poor boy,” Colleen says soothingly. “The questions he gets are almost as offensive as the one’s directed at Allura. ‘Princess, what’s your bra size.’ _Really_. She’s a war hero.”

“Now _you_ look ready to punch a journalist,” Mitch notes. He puts up his hands when Colleen waves a fist at him menacingly. “But no one has missed that it’s the two pilots who aren’t one hundred percent earth-born and bred humans who get the most complete bullshit hidden under the guise of innocent questions from those ghouls.”

“Not all of the journalists,” Sam notes, tapping the stylus of his data pad against the table thoughtfully. “There are a few who are quite respectful. Thoughtful, even. And then there are the ones that just need a little…education.”

Mitch eyes him suspiciously. “You have an idea. I think I know what this idea is, and I can promise you Kogane is going to hate every second of it.”

“He won’t hate it,” Sam says blithely.

Mitch and Colleen share a long look. Colleen sighs. “I’ll tell Veronica to have damage control ready to go.”

“You two worry entirely too much,” Sam tells them. “It’ll be fine. It’ll be great, in fact.”

* * *

[Image: _Lance Serrano stands in the front of trio of what looks to be giant, neon-green spiders. He’s grinning but looks a little stressed around the eyes. One of the trio has a foreleg on his shoulder and appears to be leaning forward as if whispering in his ear. Only no mouth is visible._ ]

14,354 likes  
deadshotLance

the Rachni from planet Suen say hi! #adayinapaladinlife #kickingassandtakingselfies #alienbabes

View 12,932 comments

pokeitwithastick: How do they talk with no mouths?

ResistanceisButyl: @pokeitwithastick the Rachni are a telepathic species that experience the universe through a complex ‘song’ that seems very similar on first blush to synesthesia. Psionic abilities are something we haven’t quite gotten the chance to study yet as humans are one of the many species in the universe who have not manifested the ability, but its super interesting!

pokeitwithastick: @ResistanceisButyl thank you, science WCN

griffinwings: @deadshotLance you’re calling a trio of giant spiders ‘babes’? I worry about you. 

deadshotLance: @griffinwings maybe you should stop applying human-centric standards of beauty to species who do not share your cultural attachments.

griffinwings: @deadshotLance still worried.

* * *

#### TRANSCRIPT OF THE SNN INTERVIEW WITH KEITH KOGANE AND PRINCESS ALLURA OF ALTEA

[…]

HIBIKI KANZAKI: Welcome back, listeners. It’s just turned 10pm, and we have a pair of otherworldly—literally!—guests: Keith Kogane, pilot of the Black Lion and leader of the paladins of Voltron, and Princess Allura of Altea. Thank you for joining me.

[muffled reply. A soft yelp.]

ALLURA OF ALTEA: What Keith _means_ to say is thank you for having us. Your broadcast is very popular at the Garrison.

HIBIKI KANZAKI: I am delighted to hear that, but a little surprised. I’ve not always been the biggest fan of the Garrison or the United Earth military in general.

ALLURA OF ALTEA: That’s why you are so popular. It is important that all perspectives be heard, particularly times of transition like these—and voices like yours remind of things that we might not want to hear.

HIBIKI KANZAKI: That’s quite the diplomatic answer, Princess. Am I correct in calling you Princess? My understanding is that Altea was destroyed 10,000 years ago and even your castle was recently lost due to the war.

ALLURA OF ALTEA: I. um. [muffled speaking] No, it’s okay. Keith, sit down, he’s allowed to bring this up. While it is true that Altea the planet no longer … exists, Altea as an ideal, as a hope to others still exists and I carry my title to honor that hope.

HIBIKI KANZAKI: Altea as an ideal? Even though no one remembers it and Lt. Commander Shirogane just called _Earth_ a beacon of hope to the universe?

KEITH KOGANE: Altea was the first to stand up to the Galra. Their sacrifice made everything that we’ve been able to do possible. They stood and fought against Zarkon when they could have just given up and given him what he wanted. If they had, then we would have absolutely no hope now. [softly] _douchebag_

ALLURA OF ALTEA: Keith…

HIBIKI KANZAKI: A very impassioned response! And it must be gratifying to hear, Princess Allura, since Keith is half-Galra himself.

KEITH: What the _fuck_ does th—

[muffled cross-talk]

HIBIKI KANZAKI: It’s just _speculation_ that Keith’s half-Galra natur—

ALLURA OF ALTEA: Keith’s loyalties have never been in question, unlike certain _human_ representatives. 

[indecipherable cross-talk]

ALLURA OF ALTEA: [loudly] And if we want to discuss the Galra, [pause. softer.] Keith’s mother, Krolia, is a senior member of the Blade of Mamora and has been fighting to protect Earth for more than two decades—long before Earth was even remotely aware of the universe outside its own heliosphere. And the preferred term, Mr. Kanzaki, is Galra heritage—I know you don’t want to make such a large cultural blunder.

HIBIKI KANZAKI: [faint cough] No, no, of course not! Krolia and your father’s relationship was quite the love affair, from what we’ve heard, could you tell us about that, Keith?

* * *

You-say-Vol @yalltron  
okay so we can all agree whoever authorized the Hibiki interview is a dumbass? #hibikikanzakiisaghoul #weknowthis #stopfeedinghim

replies  
Sam Holt @explorerSam  
@yalltron @officialKanzaki Mr. Kanzaki is a thorough journalist and we are grateful for his time

You-say-Vol @yalltron  
@explorerSam oh my god you are the nicest person ever #howareyouperfect

Hibiki Kanzaki @officialKanzaki  
@yalltron @explorerSam I’m the one that’s grateful to the Garrison for reaching out and arranging the interview #weareallinthistogether #unitedforce #unitedstanding

You-say-Vol @yalltron  
@explorerSam @officialKanzaki you’re so lucky Keith is phobic about social media dude #hedkickyourass #again #softly:douchebag

* * *

“I fail to see how that interview wasn’t a complete shitshow, Samuel,” Iverson says with an expression that suggests that he’d like to be thundering the words and, perhaps, pacing for dramatic effect if he thought it would help his case.

Sam steeples his hands in front of him and leans forward with his elbows on the long conference table. Farther down Keith squirms uncomfortably and Allura keeps her gaze pointedly down at the table. “Veronica,” he says softly, and Veronica looks up with a sharp smile. “What are the trending topics?”

Veronica flips through a few screens with a little flourish of her fingers while Lance rolls his eyes. “Princess Allura is currently the trending topic across WCN and social media in general, with Keith Kogane—all variants—as a second. Then we have: Black Paladin, Blue Paladin, Paladin Bonds, Earth’s Defenders and so on. You have go about twenty deep until you hit a trending topic that doesn’t have something to do with the either the Paladins or the MFE-Ares team.”

“Do we have a break down on the relative tenor of the discussion?” Sam asks.

“You could just say you want to know if people are saying nice things about us now,” Veronica says tartly, making several people around the table—including Shiro—snicker. He slaps a hand over his mouth when Sam gives him a mock-hurt look.

“That,” Sam tells her primly, “would be imprecise.”

“And you’re proving a point and in no way behaving like a child,” Veronica retorts and then blinks as if she can’t quite believe the words that just came out of her mouth. “Um. Sir.”

James snickers, very quietly, and Veronica rabbit punches him in the kidneys—a low, fast strike only mostly hidden by the table. He very manfully does not whimper upon impact.

“Nice of you to remember that I am, in fact, your commanding officer,” Sam says mildly.

“Yes, sir,” Veronica says as she suddenly becomes very interested in her tablet. “Ah. Positive references to the Paladins of Voltron, both individually and as a group, have increased by 67% and continue to climb. References of Hibiki Kanzaki and SNN have been steadily treading in the negative.”

Sam favors Iverson with a sunny smile. “ _That’s_ why it’s not a shitshow, Mitch.”

“I forget sometimes how manipulative you can be,” Iverson grumbles as he settles back. “I don’t know why I forget because you never stop being manipulative as all hell, but I do.”

Sam doesn’t drop his sunny smile. “Honestly, I don’t know why you continue to doubt me either, but here we are.”

Iverson makes an indistinct noise and shifts his tablet in front of him, pauses, and then turns it back the right way around again. “Right,” he says, ignoring completely the way most of the table is hiding smiles behind hands and coffee cups. “Right. Moving on from the Kanzaki interview and the entire question of the relevance of media training for _combat personnel_ \--”

“Because the Kanzaki interview and the new surge of positive coverage proves the importance of such training,” Sam interjects over Iverson’s sputtering. They stare at each other for a long moment before Iverson sighs and gestures for him to continue. “Everyone will be getting media training. Officer Serrano will oversee the project. If you have not attended a media training previously—meaning everyone in this room who isn’t Keith, Allura, myself or Shiro—you will be expected to complete training within the next 60 days.”

Shiro leans over to Keith to whisper quietly, “Good job not punching Kanzaki.”

“I wanted to,” Keith whispers back, “but Allura had a hold of my right hand the entire interview and she’s much stronger than she looks.”

Sam and Iverson sigh in unison when Shiro’s sudden, unsuccessfully muffled laughter disrupts the meeting for the third time.

“You know,” James mutters, quietly, so Lance has to slouch in close to hear him, “before you guys showed up Morning Report actually ran on time.”

“Yeah, we’re a mess,” Lance whispers back. “Sorry about that.”

* * *

Ginerva @pineconescones  
LOOK WHO CAME TO HELP REBUILD allura gave me a hug and I almost died #defendersofearth #globalrestorationproject #paladins

[Image: _a young girl stands between Allura of Altea and Lance Serrano. Allura is giving the camera a beatific smile. Lance is flashing finger guns. The girl looks like she’s about to burst into tears or hysterical laughter._ ]

Replies  
Melonia @aloverscurse  
WHICH CITY??

Sail @stillwaterstillnotdeep  
omg look at these pretty dorks

Rodger @unitedfrontunitedstanding  
Tell them we don’t need their kind of ‘help.’

* * *

[video: _Camera focuses on James Griffin, he is obviously inebriated, only kept upright by Ryan Kinkade who looks quietly judgmental but affectionate. James is half in and half out of his uniform, his hair is a disaster, and he tugs on his uniform collar petulantly._

_“James,” Nadia’s voice calls from behind the camera. “James!”_

_James’ head comes up like a scent hound and he fixes the camera with the hyper-focused look of the completely trashed. Ryan sighs._

_“To be,” says Nadia—there’s a musical quality to her quoting, “Or not to be?”_

_Ryan groans_ girl _at the same time as James’ entire face lights up. “Not!” shouts James to Nadia’s delighted laughter. Ryan lets him go as he stalks forward, swaying as if he were on four-inch stiletto heels._

_When he opens his mouth a surprisingly smooth tenor pours out. “Pull out the big guns and put your freakum dress on!”_

_Ina Leifsdottir bounces into the frame and moves in perfect sync with James as he whips his jacket off with a flourish, still singing, “All the ladies, you ain’t these/ all dressed up in your dresses~~”_

_They move through an entire dance routine that’s clearly been not only memorized but perfected. Ryan covers his face with one hand and sighs but doesn’t try to stop them. When James belts out the last lyric he flips a hand over his shoulder, fingers curled, and Ina tangles her fingers in his and they stalk out of frame to Nadia’s near-hysterical giggles._ ]

therealRizavi  
109,204 likes

and he swears he’s never listened to Beyoncé in his life. #hesadirtyliar #butacutedrunk @griffinwings 

View 9,068 comments

griffinwings: i am going to kill you

RyanKinkadeOfficial: @griffinwings @therealRizavi Iverson is going to kill you both

deadshotLance: @griffinwings @therealRizavi @RyanKinkadeOfficial you went drinking??!! _without me_?!?!? Disowned. All of you.

roundab00t: OH MY FUCKING GOD (thank you, @therealRizavi, for this generous gift.)

InaGegnHernaðurinu: @deadshotLance you are spending time with your other family. your paladin family.

therealRizavi: @roundab00t :) fam, I got you, look at the rest of my account.

roundab00t: you are a queen among women and i would die for you

deadshotLance: @InaGegnHernaðurinu who are you?

RyanKinkadeOfficial: @deadshootLance @InaGegnHernaðurinu That’s Ina. Don’t ask about the username unless you have time. A lot of time.

deadshotLance: @InaGegnHernaðurinu I _always_ have time for Ina.

InaGegnHernaðurinu: @deadshotLance except for when you’re spending time with your other family

deadshotLance: @InaGegnHernaðurinu @griffinwings Are you jealous? Is she jealous? Am I reading this right?

InaGegnHernaðurinu: @deadshotLance No.

griffinwings: @deadshotLance maybe

feelingsaboutrobots: the fuck did I just watch

* * *

“GRIFFIN,” Iverson’s voice hits a pitch designed to reach into a person’s hindbrain to hit the button marked ‘grovel before your wrathful god.’ It’s a good pitch, he’s worked hard to perfect it. “GET YOUR ASS IN HERE.”

“It’s unlike Lieutenant Griffin to be late to Morning Report, sir,” Shiro says mildly, “he might be ill.”

“Oh, he’s almost certainly ill,” Iverson mutters—boy is probably nursing the mother of all hangovers if the rather impressive state of completely smashed he’d reached in the video is to be believed. “And if he doesn’t have his ass in here in the next sixty seconds he’ll wish it’d killed him.”

“Sir?” Shiro asks with the infinite mildness of a subordinate who doesn’t want to _say_ that they think a member of their chain of command has completely gone off the rails but is _definitely_ thinking it.

“Check your tablet, Lieutenant Commander Shirogane,” he growls as he continues to glare at the doors to the main briefing room. “The details of Lieutenant Griffin’s night is there.”

Iverson doesn’t miss the way Kogane’s eyes light up and he snatches the tablet off the table with a disconcerting amount of speed. He fights to keep from shaking his head as Kogane’s eyes go round and his lips flatten as if he’s biting them together to keep any sound from escaping. Sheer, malicious delight radiates off the Black Paladin in near palpable waves.

Shiro’s eyebrows slowly rise as he watches the video over Kogane’s shoulder. “That,” he says slowly, “is an impressive amount of coordination for that state of, um, inebriation.”

“He’s _trashed_ ,” Kogane breathes. He looks like everything he’s ever wanted for Christmas for the past twenty years of his young life had just shown up all at once. 

Iverson can feel his soul try to rattle out of his body as he sighs.

He eyeballs the rest of Griffin’s team who regard him with varying degrees of chagrin. They are, generally, good soldiers and a credit to their planet. He’s not sure what’s gone wrong but by god he intends to get the bottom of it.

“Lieutenant Griffin, reporting for Morning Report,” Griffin says as he slides in, “sir.”

Iverson switches to eyeballing him. Griffin’s chin goes up, just a miniscule gesture, but Iverson’s been serving with or commanding Griffins for most of his career—he recognizes that faintly mutinous look. There’s not a hair out of place on the boy, no sign of the dizziness that must surely be making the room spin or the nausea that makes him want to sway on his feet. Griffin’s uniform is impeccable, probably freshly ironed, and his boots gleam with a high shine.

“You’re late,” he barks—an opening salvo to see how the boy takes it.

There’s a very faint twitch of the brow. “Morning Report starts at 7am each day of the week except for Sundays—when it begins at 9am in consideration for Chapel services, which are optional,” Griffin states as he fixes his gaze somewhere over Iverson’s left shoulder. “It is currently 6:56am and so I am not late. Sir.”

“Are you getting cute with me, Lieutenant Griffin,” he growls.

“No, sir,” Griffin demurs. “Cuteness is not within my stated MOS. Sir.”

Shiro and Sam both sputter out laughs, tiny things quickly smothered, but noticeable nonetheless.

Iverson can feel his eye twitch. 

“Lieutenant Griffin would you care to explain what you were doing at approximately twenty-three hundred last night?” He asks with the type of stillness of a large predator watching a particularly slow and stupid prey animal.

Griffin’s eyes flicker to Rizavi for the barest of moments and she gives a little shrug.

“I was engaging in recreational and team-bonding activities with my squadron, sir,” Griffin says. There’s the briefest moment hesitation. “There may have been some alcoholic beverages involved.”

“ _May_ ,” Kogane repeats, still looking as if the entire travesty is a personal gift to him for every good deed he’s ever done.

Griffin’s eyes cut to Kogane with a truly impressive glare. His nostrils might have flared for a second.

Iverson folds his hands behind his back and stares at Griffin. The room goes so quiet Iverson briefly wonders if anyone is still breathing. “Lieutenant Griffin, recite Article 134, if you could.”

There’s that faint tilt of the chin as Griffin opens his mouth, “Article 134 of the United Earth Code of Military Justice states: “an enlisted member or officer who exhibits disorderly conduct, drunkenness or influence of alcohol, or both while on active duty at an alleged place like a military camp, station, base, aircraft, ship, or other military vessel at an alleged time is in violation of article 134 Disorderly Conduct, Public Drunkenness and shall be punished as considered appropriate by the military court.”

“Explain to me why I shouldn’t throw the book at you, Lieutenant,” Iverson asks mildly, “as that video makes its way around the globe at the speed of light?”

“Because, one, it would go before a military tribunal that would almost certainly find for my innocence,” Griffin reports without a flicker of hesitation. “I was not on active duty, nor on base, nor engaging in behavior likely to cause a breach of the peace or could be reasonably found to offend the morals of the United Earth military.”

Iverson glowers as Sam visibly fights back a snicker.

“And two,” Griffin continues without missing a beat, “because, with all due respect, sir, it's not like I went down to Bragg Boulevard to shake daddy's little money maker for twenties stuffed into my undies. Sir.”

Iverson will treasure the way Kogane’s mouth drops open at that statement like he can’t quite believe what he just heard. He’ll deny it if ever confronted, but it will almost certainly be one of Iverson’s fondest memories as he’s recounting his life on his death bed. 

Griffin is continuing to give him that faintly mutinous but still perfectly put together look that every member of the Griffin family seemed to have built into their genetic code. Iverson resists the urge to sigh with prodigious effort.

"Lieutenant Griffin, do not think for a moment I have forgotten your brothers and their infinite capacity for bullshit," he says lowly. There’s a small intake of breath as Griffin’s team collectively holds their breath. No one’s talked about James and his dead or missing brothers since Sendak’s first attack. No one had dared.

" _Their_ capacity for bullshit, sir," James says with his gaze still fixed somewhere above Iverson's left shoulder. 

Iverson eyes him for a moment—he’d hoped against hope that the Griffin propensity for envelope-pushing fuckery had somehow skipped James but apparently that hope was in vain: "Just because you are getting a late start does not mean I have forgotten the Griffin List." 

He watches out of the corner of his eye as Keith mouths _Griffin List_ in complete confusion at Shiro, and his Lieutenant Commander shrugs helplessly—either just as confused or unable to give full account to the terrible glory that is The Griffin List. In fairness to Lieutenant Commander Shirogane, the list is extensive.

Griffin cocks his head, bird-like, "is this going on the list, sir?”

"'Is this going on the...'," Iverson repeats as if the words will suddenly become less personally offensive in the restatement. He sighs. "Yes. Item 215 on the list of things the Griffin Brothers Are Not Allowed To Do In The United Earth Military Services: you are not allowed to strip while singing Beyoncé’s 'freakum dress' while in uniform." 

"But other Beyoncé songs would be acceptable?" Ina asks. Iverson glares at her. She blinks at him, the very image of innocence. "I like to have things clarified beforehand, sir." 

"There will be no stripping, _at all_ , while wearing Garrison uniforms!" he says with the type of sternness a man gets when telling a cat to get off a counter. Firm, but with no expectation that it will be followed. 

"Yes, sir," Ina says, but there's a thoughtful air about her.

Iverson considers glaring at all of them and then dismisses the impulse. They’ve all got their collective backs up in that sort of unified defiance only truly young squadrons got when caught misbehaving. It wouldn’t generally be an issue—he’d just make them run until they wanted their legs to fall off to save them from the pain of exhaustion—but the damned video going viral across the WCN made things complicated. 

He suddenly has an idea. A glorious, terrible idea.

He smiles at Griffin and notes with distinct pleasure the way a faint look of trepidation snaps across the boy’s face for just a moment. “Lieutenant Griffin,” he says, tone suddenly jovial in the way of all commanding officers in the moment they’ve found an assignment they know their subordinate will truly hate. “You are correct in noting that a military tribunal is likely to find in your favor, so we will not be proceeding down that path.”

Iverson files away for later consideration Kogane’s quick look of disappointment. A little bit of competiveness between squadrons is one thing, whatever is brewing between Kogane and Griffin is another. He’ll need to talk to Shiro at some point.

Griffin doesn’t quite make a questioning sound or raise an eyebrow, but he gets the air that he’d _like_ to.

“Media relations are an important part of our current mission,” he says, ignoring the way that Sam makes a rude sound of disbelief, “as is ensuring that we set an example for the world to follow.”

He can see the moment when what he’s about to order dawns on both Kogane and Griffin. Kogane’s eyes go bright with unholy anticipation and Griffin’s jaw firms up like he’s about to take a punch.

“Therefore,” Iverson continues as if he sees neither of these things, “rather than have your ass court-martialed as dictated by the UEMCJ I have decided to be benevolent,” this time Shiro makes a sound of disbelief that Iverson continues to ignore, “and instead direct you to coordinate with our head of media relations to develop a PSA series on the dangers of alcoholism and irresponsible drinking.”

Griffin closes his eyes for a moment and nods faintly. “Yes, sir.”

“I’m sorry, Lieutenant Griffin,” Iverson says mildly, “I’m not sure I heard that.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Excellent.”

* * *

Mini-voltron reblogged from angry-purple-space-chinchillas

Atlas-Earths-Defender:

there’s been so much misinformation flying around about what happened with the paladins and the war with the Galra and our MFE pilots and the UEMS and the Voltron Coalition (ie ‘the rebels’) and who are these Blade of Mamora guys anyway that I’m here to lay out what I’ve gleaned from, like, combing every press release and ‘cast I can find like a crazy person with a string fetish. Note: trying to say x happened y year is impossible because yay time dilation and space is weird—so this is more … general order of events:

  * the Kerberos mission launch—it all starts here, folks. lt. commander Takashi Shirogane is the pilot for mission. Commander Samuel Holt is in Command and Lt First Class Matt Holt is the science tech (source x,x, x
  * the Kerberos mission disappears—now we know that the Galra captured lt. commander Shirogane, Commander Holt, and Matt Holt but back then the Garrison said ‘pilot error’ and we all believed them (source x,x,x) 
  * Keith Kogane is expelled from the Garrison for ‘discipline issues’ and disappears (source x,x okay I know that last one is Hibiki Kanzaki and he is _super_ sketch but it’s hard to find sources on our Black Paladin okay)
  * Lance Serrano is moved up to fighter class (source x)
  * (also for your consideration a super cute picture from his promotion ceremony snapped by his sister. everyone with me _awwww_ )
  * James Griffin becomes official squadron leader of the cadet fighter class (source x)
  * (look at him with all his brothers, our boy is sixth generation military and it _shows_ )
  * Unidentified Object Crashes In The Desert (it’s lt. commander shirogane!)(sourcex, x, x)
  * Unidentified Object Blows Up A Big Fucking Chunk of The Desert And Vanishes (it’s the blue lion!) (source x, x, x yes that last one is a selfie of Lance from the Blue Lion the day they disappeared. Lance, plz.)
  * lt. commander Shirogane, Pidge Gunderson/Katie Holt, Tsuyoshi ‘Hunk’ Garrett, Keith Kogane, and Lance Serrano all arrive at the Castle of Lions and wake Princess Allura from 10,000 year status (source x, x, x)
  * The First Attack on Zarkon – paladins and Allura use the teleduv to trap Zarkon, former evil overlord of the Galra Empire and apparently made Sendak look like a puppy (x, x, x, okay yes that last one is some sort of science paper written by Slav and I don’t understand it either – science side of WCN?)
  * Lotor is emperor for, like, two months and chases our defenders around (source x, x)
  * something, something, a Paladin’s show? (I will pay money, my first born, my _soul_ for holos of this. Someone get on this.) (source  x)
  * Keith becomes a member of the Blade of Mamora for a while (source x,x)
  * Zarkon comes back? Lotor is deposed by his father? Paladin interviews on this get unclear (source x,x,x,x)
  * Pidge finds her brother and he’s a rebel leader! (source x,x, x, look at that last source, he is also fucking _hot_. Matt Holt call me plz)
  * Attack on Naxzela—something something evil witch nearly blows up a third of the universe? what? (source x,x,x that last one has the only interview with Kolivan, leader of the Blades of Mamora)
  * Paladins find Commander Holt! (source x, x, x, x)
  * Commander Holt returns to earth (source x, x,x)
  * Commander Holt is put in lockdown immediately by the UEMS (source x, x, x)
  * Commander Holt and the Garrison start the Mega-Flex Exofighters (MFE-Ares) project in secret (source x, x, x) 
  * James Griffin is tapped to be squadron leader of the MFE-Ares fighters—Ryan Kinkade, Nadia Rizavi, and Ina Leifsdottir are tapped as his squad (source x, x)
  * Lotor pks Zarkon and becomes Emperor via some sort of Olympic Fire Lighting ceremony but instead of getting fun games you get fascism and colonization, and apparently, he’s friends with the Paladins for a bit? (source x, x, x)
  * Galra Empire starts fragmenting (source x, x)
  * Keith and his mother, Krolia—bad ass co-leader of the Blades of Mamora with Kolivan, spend two years on the back of a space whale. no, I don’t understand either – science WCN plz explain (source x (this one is the cutest mother-son interview you will ever watch) x)
  * Keith and Krolia discover Romelle and also the fact that Lotor was super shady (?) (a lot of these interviews got redacted and I’m lowkey too nervous to really go digging about this) (source x, x, x) 
  * Paladins led by Keith confront Lotor (source x, x, x)
  * Paladins disappear after the fight with Lotor (source x, x, x)
  * Blades of Mamora and the Rebels get hunted by Galra factions; Matt Holt contacts Earth (source x,x, careful with that last interview—it’s the entire Holt family and it’s _super emotional_ )
  * Colleen Holt breaks the UEMS silence with the broadcast heard around the world (source x) 
  * MFE-Ares project ramps up as the world pours resources into the Garrison (source x, x, x) 
  * The first wave of Sendak’s invasion hits (source x, x, x) 
  * Every base except the UEMS SFTC Arizona Garrison (‘the Garrison’ now) falls (source x, x)
  * The Garrison loses _all_ of their senior pilots (source  x, x)
  * lt. Commander Shirogane’s (ex ?) boyfriend, Lt. Commander Adam Wilder dies as part of the first defense of the planet (source x, x, x)
  * Veronica Serrano organizes the Resistance using pre-WWIII signal towers to send information (source x,x,x)
  * Sendak builds labor camps (source x, x)
  * Sendak constructs military bases that then build the Zaiforge Cannons (source x, x) 
  * the Paladins return! (source x,x,x)
  * Battle to liberate earth (source x,x,x,)



*

Handsupdontshoot:

OP is gonna get disappeared, calling it now

*

ResistanceisButyl:

Science side of WCN checking in to explain the time dilation shenanigans! Sorry, I can’t really get into how the teladuv works because it’s mostly classified.

 _read more_

*

Isaidihaveabigstick

If the teladuv is classified, then why was Slav able to publish a paper about it?

*

RestanceisButyl:

Because its Slav and no one wants to argue with him about it. Besides we figured no one but Slav would understand the damned thing anyway.

*

Isaidihaveabigstick:

… you sound like you were in the room when this was decided…

*

roundab00t:

he probably was. ResistanceisButyl is Matt Holt.

(Hi, Matt.)

*

ResistanceisButyl:

Hi! And sorry OP, but I have a partner.

*

Atlas-Earths-Defender:

OH MY GOD

121,983 notes  
#text heavy #Paladins of Voltron #MFE-Ares Pilots #history #did someone check in with the OP? #I think Matt’s reply might have killed them

* * *

##  **Earth First: Humanity United – Resistance to the New Invasion**

**Welcome to Earth First: Humanity United**  
We are a community of species realists and idealists. We are Human Patriots who support _true_ diversity and a homeland for _all_ peoples. Thousands of organizations promote the interests, values, and heritage of aliens. We promote ours.

Invaded once. _Never_ Again.

Guiding Members (2 viewing)  
(private forum for those who have supported Earth First: Humanity United financially)

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(words have consequences. Do not post anything until you have read and understood the rules.)

##### General

Newslinks & Articles (412 viewing)  
(All news of interest to Pure Humans. Do not post the full text of copyrighted articles without permission of the owner. Limit "fair use" excerpts to 65 words.)

Politics & Continuing Crisis (1,200 viewing)  
(Practical Politics, Hibiki Kanzaki, Bugsters, Voltron, the ‘Coalition’ and, yes, the occasional conspiracy theory…

Humanity United Broadcasts (55 viewing)  
(summaries and commentaries. Links to archives. Shows a distributed and randomized)

##### Activism

Events (354 viewing)  
(Pro-human demonstrations, rallies, conferences, talk shows, demonstrations)

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(Promoting Human Rights through local and diffused organization.)

Local and Regional (623 viewing)  
(Contact information for those who want to work together in their communities.)

* * *


	3. voluntold

Wisdom-like-silence reblogged from zerogravitas

roundab00t posted:

[image: _a series of screenshots of Nadia Rizavi’s WCN account, specifically each video of James Griffin. The alert “nottheblackpaladin(official) has liked this!” on each._ ]

[image: _a black man in a tux sitting in front of a shimmering curtain captioned with “Galatians 4:16_ ]

*

yawningangel:

proves nothing

*

notinventedhere:

you have to admit it’s a little suspicious.

*

iblamemymother:

who is ‘nottheblackpaladin(official)’ and why do we care?

*

roundab00t:

‘nottheblackpaladin(official)’ is Keith Kogane’s account. He just made it. And then liked all of Nadia’s videos of James.

*

Iblameyourmother:

Not all of them. Just the ones of James drunk. And singing.

*

iblamemymother:

_oh_

16,093 notes  
Tagged: #Paladins of Voltron, #MFE-Ares Pilots, #Keith Kogane, #James Griffin, #i fucking KNEW IT

* * *

Shiro pauses at the threshold of the lounge out of sheer baffled confusion—his mind trying to make sense out of what his eyes are telling him is in front of him: Keith curled into one of the deeply uncomfortable orange armchairs, completely absorbed in his personal tablet. Every so often he taps it with a particular air of vindictive pleasure. He seems, Shiro thinks, extremely pleased with himself.

“Find something interesting,” Shiro asks as he walks around the back of the arm chair to peer at the tablet.

“ _Yes_ ,” Keith says, punching ‘like’ on a video before turning up to smile beatifically at Shiro. 

“Dare I ask what,” Shiro asks, fighting to not smile.

Before Keith can answer the lounge doors bang open to admit one Nadia Rizavi—hair a mess and eyes wild. There’s a bandage slapped across her cheek, one of those butterfly adhesives for cuts too deep to leave but too shallow for stitches that Shiro wonders at for a moment. She scans the room before pointing at Keith, “YOU!” she yelps, “What are you doing?!”

Keith looks down at his tablet, considers it for a moment, and hits ‘like’ on another video. “Nothing?” he says with a little shrug that manages to be both smug and shy, “watching videos on WCN?”

Shiro backs up as Nadia stalks over to them and gets right into Keith’s space with apparently no consideration for the way his back goes up or his eyes narrow. She studies him intently as if she can peer into his head and read his secrets from the back of his skull. “Are you going through my account and liking all my videos?”

Keith squirms, just a little, and Shiro can see the second Nadia spots it. Her eyes narrow. “Maybe?” Keith offers quietly. “Not _all_ of them.”

“Just the ones of James,” Nadia says, still mere inches away from Keith.

“Not _all_ of them,” Keith says again. There’s a tiny edge to his voice, a sharp and malicious pleasure.

Nadia narrows her eyes further to contemplative slits. “Just the ones where he’s drunk. And singing.”

“You do have a lot of them,” Keith says.

“He’s a cute drunk,” Nadia counters. She still hasn’t gotten out of Keith’s space, though Shiro’s pretty certain they have both forgotten this fact.

Keith makes a non-committal noise.

“You are making my squadron leader _lose his shit_ ,” Nadia says, her enunciation on each word perfect.

Keith looks her dead in the eye and taps ‘like’ on another video. Nadia blinks, bites her lips, and then starts to snicker. She pulls away still snickering and Keith folds his tablet against his chest before saying, “It’s not my fault he’s been caught on camera. Drunk. And singing. A lot.”

Nadia dissolves into helpless giggles and Shiro sighs. Keith blinks up at him with a wide-eyed, faux-innocent expression. The vicious smile lingering on the edges of his expression does not help him. Shiro arches an eyebrow. “I thought you weren’t going make a WCN account,” he says mildly. “I thought WCN accounts were for ‘attention whores with nothing better to do’?”

Keith doesn’t look at him but there’s a faint bit of pink to the tops of his ears as he goes back to scrolling through Nadia’s account. “I changed my mind.”

“Oh my god,” Nadia breathes as she fights to control her giggles. “You set up an account _just_ to fuck with Jamie.”

Keith looks up, eyebrow arching. “Jamie?”

“Oh no,” Nadia says and waves a finger at him. “You can’t call him that. Only his brothers could call him that to his face. He’ll _kill_ you.”

“He can _try_ ,” Keith says. “I kicked his ass before. I can do it again.”

“You say this like Jamie would ever fight fair,” Nadia says with a tilt of her head. But she’s bouncing to her feet, all excitable energy and bright eyes, before he can start to reply. “You have a new account, right? I want the inaugural selfie!”

“What? No, wa—,” Keith’s halfway through his protest when he’s got a lapful of enthusiastic fighter pilot. Shiro’d laugh but Nadia snakes an arm up and locks it around his neck, dragging him down into the frame. 

“Okay!” She says as she holds Keith’s tablet up and beams a bright smile up at it. “Smile!”

Keith is still sputtering and trying to figure out how to remove her from his lap without actually touching her as Nadia’s fingers move quick and sure over the tablet. “And filter set!” she chirps before twisting the tablet around to show Shiro, “we look cute!”

Shiro is forced to admit that they look cute, for a flexible definition of cute. 

“You can’t just add that to my account,” Keith protests.

Nadia twists around in his lap until she’s got her legs flung over the edge of the armchair. Keith holds his arms up and away from her like she’s radioactive. “Can!” she says cheerfully, “and, in fact, did. Okay, friending me and Ryan and Ina and Lance—”

“If you add Griffin to my friends list I will kill you,” Keith promises.

“And Jamie!” Nadia chirps. She holds the tablet under her chin and beams at him. “This is going to be _fun_.”

* * *

[image: _Keith Kogane, Nadia Rizavi, and Takashi Shirogane are squashed together in an impressively ugly armchair. Keith looks faintly horrified at Nadia who has made herself completely at home in his lap, beaming up at the camera that she’s holding above their heads. She’s got Shiro in a half head-lock, pulled down into the frame from over the back of the armchair. He’s clearly letting her and is giving the camera a bemused smile, like he’s not quite sure how he’s ended up in this position and he’s not quite sure how to get back out._

nottheblackpaladin(official)  
23,009 likes  
I got the inaugural selfie! #first! #thisisnadia #ifyoudeletethiskogane #iwillcutyou #donottestme

deadshotLance: look who decided to join modernity

LivewareProblem: looks good buddy!

OneHandLuke: @therealRizavi thank you for taking the picture of us

InaGegnHernaðurinu: who is @LivewareProblem, do we know him

deadshotLance: @InaGegnHernaðurinu that’s Hunk, and it’s too early for you to be this creepy, Ina

InaGegnHernaðurinu: @deadshotLance oh, your other family

therealRizavi: @OneHandLuke no problem! 

LivewareProblem: @deadshotLance ‘other’ family?

nottheblackpaladin(official): @LivewareProblem thanks Hunk

griffinwings: cute

* * *

Garrison Military Unit Supports Law Enforcement  
wcn.gbc.com/garrison-military-unit…  
Law Enforcement agencies are working to coordinate information and operations with a newly formed Galaxy Garrison mobile operations unit. Galaxy Garrison spokesperson, LCDR Veronica Serrano stated….

 

The New Face of Extremism: Earth First: Humanity United  
wcn.morningmail.com/…/the-new-face-of…  
In the aftermath of the three-year Galra occupation of Earth a new threat has arisen from the ashes, this time one from within. Extremists with a virulent anti-alien message….

 

Humanity Divided On Alien Issue  
wcn.dailyreview.com…/pop/…/humanity-divided-on-…  
As the world settles into the new normal of a multi-species civilization some among humanity feel left behind, forgotten and silenced on their own homeworld. ‘Extremists’ representing humanity-centric…

* * *

##### 1 – 20 of 123 Works in James Griffin/Keith Kogane

walk across a fragile line by roundab00t  
Defenders RPF  
 **Graphic Depictions of Violence** , **Explicit** , James Griffin/Keith Kogane, Keith Kogane/Takashi Shirogane, James Griffin/Ryan Kinkade, Lance Serrano/Allura of Altea, James Griffin, Keith Kogane, Ryan Kinkade, Takashi Shirogane, Lance Serrano, Allura of Altea, Tsuyoshi ‘Hunk’ Garrett, Pidge Gunderson, Ina Leifsdottir, Veronica Serrano, Nadia Rizavi, Canon Typical Violence, PTSD, Pining, Angst,Hate Sex, Anal Sex, Oral Sex, Riming, touch-starved!Keith, keith’s life is very hard

(they each see the other as having their ideal, most out-of-reach goals, and they don’t want so much to harm the other as they want to dig their fingers into the others chest, fingers twisting in slick, pulsing guts, to figure out _how, what makes it work, makes them tick_ )

It started off as a think-fic about these two dumb boys I SWEAR.

Updates per my ouija board

Language: Universal Basic Words: 59,980 Chapters: 6/? Comments: 680 Kudos: 4324 Bookmarks: 245 Hits: 32082

 

Do Something (stand there and bleed) by roundab00t  
Defenders RPF  
 **Graphic Depictions of Violence** , **Explicit** , James Griffin/Keith Kogane, James Griffin, Keith Kogane, Ryan Kinkade, Tsuyoshi ‘Hunk’ Garrett, Plot What Plot/Porn without Plot, Hate Sex, Oral Sex, Anal Sex, Biting, Marking, look me in the eyes and tell me Kogane doesn’t have a marking kink, look at those fangs, Power Exchange

The Paladins of Voltron have finally come back to earth and of course they would be led by _this motherfucker_

(I wanted hate fucking and apparently I have to do everything myself in this house)

Language: Universal Basic Words: 4,256 Chapters: 1/1 Comments: 312 Kudos:2342 Bookmarks: 103 Hits: 13455

 

Hymn for the Dead by chrono  
Defenders RPF  
 **Graphic Depictions of Violence** , **Explicit** , James Griffin/Keith Kogane, Keith Kogane/Takashi Shirogane (one-sided), James Griffin/Ryan Kinkade, Lance Serrano/Allura of Altea, James Griffin, Keith Kogane, Ryan Kinkade, Takashi Shirogane, Lance Serrano, Allura of Altea, Tsuyoshi ‘Hunk’ Garrett, Pidge Gunderson | Katie Holt, Ina Leifsdottir, Veronica Serrano, Nadia Rizavi, Commander Samuel Holt, Colleen Holt, Commander Mitchell Iverson, Admiral Sanda, Canon Typical Violence, James Griffin’s Dead Brothers, ’canon’ typical looool but you know what I mean, PTSD, Pining, Angst,Smut, I mean eventually there will be sex I swear, Political Intrigue, Cover Ups, I’m not saying Sanda was a shady bitch, but…

Bases are the best-worst places to keep secrets—James knows that after living on them his entire life—and they all have a pretty good guess who has taken over the officer’s quarters on the far side of the Garrison. Especially after Colleen Holt had shown up breathing fire with an expression on her face that James sincerely and devotedly hopes is never directed at him.

(the Galra invasion as told by one James Griffin, leader of the MFE-Pilots, Garrison golden child, and twice voted most likely to know what he’s doing. 

Only he doesn’t know what he’s doing. 

Not at all.)

(updates per roundab00t’s ouija board)

Language: Universal Basic Words: 108,983 Chapters: 11/24 Comments: 235 Kudos:1342 Bookmarks: 80 Hits: 9821

* * *

Lance rolls his shoulders, tension making the muscles knot in ways that promised a sprain if he doesn’t watch himself. He wonders briefly if he can get Ina to give him a back massage—put her pointy little elbows to work doing something other than digging into his side every time he cracks a joke she doesn’t get. 

“Lance,” Keith’s voice crackles over the comms. “You got the edge of that plate sealed yet?”

“Yep,” he says as Red rumbles away in the back of his head that they’d already gotten _all_ the plates sealed, and could they get a move on? She’s bored. He sends back placating nonsense. Getting an ancient, semi-sentient robot lion to understand the importance of helping with reconstruction—even the boring, slow, tedious bits—is a work in progress. 

“Okay,” Keith says, clearly distracted, “when you get the—”

“Done,” Lance replies, not bothering to let Keith finish—Red’s impatience rubbing off on him. He runs through the mission specs James had sent him in the early morning—flashing red message: ‘READ THIS YOU FUCK,’ blaring in the low light of dawn—while he waits for Hunk to maneuver the next piece into position. Blah, blah, blah chameleon gear blah blah FN-FNAR rifles blah blah remote drop blah blah limited support. Same as the last six missions and Lance can’t help but shake his head at Jamie’s fussing. It’s not like they can’t run these missions in their sleep at this point. He barely waits for the heavy _thunk_ of the support slats sliding into place before nudging Red into movement and she responds like a sports car with an open throttle.

“Woah!” Hunk yelps as Red’s fire melts the steel into place only seconds after Yellow clears the airspace. “Got a hot date or something?”

“Or something,” he grunts in response. Red prods at him, eager and excited. She twines around his thoughts like a cat demanding pets—hopeful this new mission would be one she could join, something she could _do_. When he sends her back the mission specs—small team, tight quarters, playing cat-and-mouse games inside weird pseudo militia compounds and above all _secret_ —she doesn’t sulk like he expects but presses back a sense of concern.

_alonebad, isolatedbad, teamgoodsafecomfort_

Lance fights not to rolls his eyes and sends back an image of James and Ina waiting for him at the hanger doors. The feeling of Kinkade’s broad back pressed against his. The sound of Nadia’s high, delighted laughter and the white gleam of her wicked smile in the dark.

 _NOTTEAM_ is Red’s only response.

It’s an ongoing conversation. Lance will admit.

He sends back a soothing sense that the paladins are, of course, _of course_ , his team (he’d _never_ leave Allura unless she wanted him to go) but that he’s also got another team—one that needs him more at the moment.

 _NOTTEAM_ , Red grumbles, refusing to be comforted.

Lance sighs. It might be a longer ongoing conversation than he’d originally hoped.

“Damn, Lance,” Pidge chirps, her screen popping up as he melts the last support beam into place. “What’s lit a fire under you? I mean, you’re the Red Paladin now and all, guardian of fire, but you don’t need to take it so literally.”

Despite her flippant tone, her eyes seem a little tight with worry.

“On a little bit of time crunch,” Lance says—by his calculation he’s got an hour to finish their current reconstruction project, grab something to eat and then hit the MFE-Ares hangers before mission brief. 

Pidge makes a face. “You don’t actually have a hot date, do you?”

Lance laughs. “Oh yeah, her name starts with an F and ends with an R and her measurements are 7.65 by 51MM.”

“Thank you, Lance,” Keith says, sounding bored and annoyed. “We don’t actually need to hear the details.”

“He’s talking about Ryan’s gun,” Allura says, and her screen pops up next to Pidge’s. Her eyes are bright and amused. “Going shooting?”

Lance opens his mouth to brag on the mission and then snaps it closed when he remembers James’ note that the mission was secret, ‘even from your little Paladin friends.’ He’ll have to ask James if that means Allura too (because _that’ll_ be a problem) but he doesn’t want to push it with James running stressed, high-strung and prone to really hilarious fits of fussy mother-hen-ing. 

“Something like that,” he says with a lopsided grin. When she starts to frown, he adds quickly: “Tell you about it when we get back, okay?”

Allura studies his pleading expression through the tiny window of their feed and then nods slowly. “I’m holding you to that.”

Fortunately, Keith calls them to clear comms and the conversation drops. It makes him grin to see the way the Olkari engineers cheer as they probably accelerate the construction timeline for the new Joint-Chiefs’ compound by at least six months. Red rumbles in the back of his head all the way back behind the wire, tense and unhappy, but she doesn’t push things. Which he’s grateful for, he really doesn’t need a lion-induced headache right before mission start.

Lance hits the ground running when they land. Dances past Shiro, eeling away from his outstretched hand, and bolting full-speed for the MFE-Ares hangers. Keith shouts something that he doesn’t quite make out, but he figures it’s fine. Their mission ended without any issues. Anything else will have to wait for mission debrief—something that Keith never does, so problem solved.

He throws himself into the MFE-Ares’ changing room, skidding on the slick tile and pulling off his paladin armour haphazardly, right as James finishes clasping the last piece of his chameleon suit into place. Ryan catches him before Lance slams into the lockers with a nearly imperceivable sigh. James’ face makes an expression that Lance can’t parse.

“I’m not late,” Lance says preemptively. James rolls his eyes.

“Have you eaten?” James says—tone weirdly scolding and fussy at the same time.

“No time,” Lance says as he wiggles out of his undersuit. Ryan hands him the chameleon undersuit, a weird silver-gray thing that feels like silk and aminosilicate mesh had a terrible lovechild—and shares a look with James.

James’ face is still making an expression that Lance doesn’t understand as he fishes out an energy bar from one of the pockets of his tactical gear and hands it to Lance. “Eat that,” James says, voice clipped and hard. “The paladins had a mission?”

“Yeah,” Lance replies as he shoves the energy bar in his mouth and starts snapping on armor. Lance forces himself not to grin at Jamie’s look of displeasure as he talks with his mouthful: “Last minute thing to help with the Joint-Chiefs’ project.”

“I didn’t hear anything about that,” James says, tone still weirdly flat. Lance looks at Ryan, but his face is set at mission-start-blank and gives nothing away.

Lance shrugs. “I think Keith figured we could get in and get it done quick, so no need to clear it.”

“No need to clear it,” James repeats with a slow head nod, like he’s thinking something through in depth. “I see. Well.”

“It’ll have to wait, Jamie,” Ryan says. James blinks at him and they share a quick, silent conversation done entirely in eyebrows and tiny facial twitches. 

James huffs out an irritated breath between turning on his heel and marching out the door with a type of military precision that Lance frankly admires more than he’d like to admit. Ryan claps a hand on his shoulder and helps him with the last of his armour. 

“He’s not angry with you,” Ryan tells him seriously—Lance isn’t sure Ryan does _anything_ without a layer of aching seriousness. “Don’t worry about it.”

Given that Lance has less than zero idea what’s going on in the first place he figures it’s the best advice he can take in the situation.

* * *

#### Galaxy Garrison Supports Local Police Operations

A police strike force took down a ring of human extremists early this morning. Police told reporters at a short press conference that law enforcement had been tracking the movement of the group for several weeks, but had been unable to locate their base of operations. Until the Galaxy Garrison offered technical and military support.

[image: _Lt. James Griffin stands in front of his team listening seriously to a police officer dressed in heavy tactical gear. Griffin is dressed in the combat armor of the MFE-Ares team, a heavy rifle cradled in his arms. Paladin Lance Serrano hangs off LTJG Ryan Kinkade’s shoulder, both have FN-FNAR sniper rifles strapped to their backs._ ]

Working with a small military unit from the Galaxy Garrison, police were able to quickly find and neutralize the ring of extremists before they were able to detonate explosives set along key points of the water filtration system for the Mojave Desert.

_Click for more._

Comments  
ProudXenophobe commented:  
Galaxy Garrison is nothing more than a pack of groveling hounds for these new alien invaders. Voltron is the defender of the universe? Don’t make me fucking laugh. Their leader is _Galra_ just like the last asshole who tried to take over our planet. Or did everyone suddenly forget Sendak? The MFE team are being fooled, you are all being fooled!  
1.3K likes

_click to join the discussion!_

* * *

[video: _camera shakes for a moment before focusing on the torn and pocked marked desert landscape immediately outside the wire of the UEMS SFTC Arizona Garrison, nothing but a weak and pathetic wind moves over the desolate landscape. Veronica Serrano and James Griffin sit in a Garrison heavy armored convoy vehicle flanked by a pair of poles each supporting a pair of discs barely a half-foot in diameter. A soft mechanical chime sounds faintly followed by the sharp ‘pap’ of an FN-M2HB rifle followed by a sharp metallic ting as one of the discs shakes in the wind._

_“Wargame start,” says Veronica Serrano, irony heavy in her voice. “So,” she says softly, “bets that my brother kicks your boy’s ass?”_

_“No bet,” answers James Griffin, “and I’d argue that they are both mine and so I’d win that bet anyway.”_

_Veronica makes a soft non-committal noise in the back of her throat. “Ah,” she breathes, “found him. Sniper!” she barks, and a heads dozen pop up in the desert, each painted in camouflage design and bright-eyed. “Forty meters to my left in the rocks. Move!”_

_The squadron dashes to follow her directions as James laughs almost too softly to be heard. “He’s not gonna be there.”_

_“Shut up,” Veronica mutters._

_“No sniper, ma’am!”_

_“Told you.”_

_“I said shut up.”_

_Their bickering is interrupted by a sharp pop of an FN-M2HB shot and the other disc clangs against its post, a hole straight through its middle. Another crack answers so quickly it almost sounds like an echo and the first disc flips over, another shot through its middle._

_“Your brother’s competitive streak is something else,” James comments lightly. “Sniper!” He calls, and the squad turns to him expectantly. “Nine by ten degrees in the low grass.”_

_“Kinkade?” Veronica asks._

_“Lance,” James answers. “Though probably a ghost.”_

_“Negative, Lieutenant!”_

_“Ghost it is.”_

_A shot cracks the air and the second disc clangs against its post again. Another shot answers it with heartbeats, rattling the first disc on its stand._

_“He’s going to piss Ryan off playing games like this,” Veronica observes._

_“I think that’s what he’s going for,” James replies, sounding entirely delighted by the prospect. “Five feet from the big sagebrush. Keep going. Sniper at your feet.”_

_The squad tamps down around a blooming sagebrush that bobs gently in the wind. “No sniper!”_

_“Sneaky fuckers,” Veronica observes._

_“It’s almost like we trai—” James’ comment gets cut off by a shot punching through the first disc, making it rattle against its post. James laughs again, clearly thrilled, as a second shot follows it like choir response and the second disc swings with the force the shot straight through its center, a perfect bullseye._

_“And who was the competitive one again?” Veronica mutters._

_“Lance does bring out the best in him,” James says brightly. “Also, found the sneaky asshole. Squad! Move to twenty by four from the outcropping. Move, move, move. Stop! Sniper in the shrub grass.”_

_There’s a moment of silence and a shot snaps through the air before the squad can answer James. The first disc flips over. “Um,” says the young squad leader. “No sniper.”_

_“Call it?” Veronica asks._

_The snapping ‘pap’ of the FN-M2HB breaks the soft silence and the second disc flips over. James arches an eyebrow. “Before Ryan has a chance to even the score? Playing dirty.”_

_Another shot interrupts Veronica, the first disc shakes against its pole—another hole joining the collection, she raises an eyebrow at James. “It’s just going to keep going like this. And I don’t have the free time to watch them play silly games.”_

_“Squad!” James says rather than answer. “Four feet into devil’s lettuce. Keep going. Going. There!”_

_“No sniper!”_

_“I’m calling it,” Veronica decides. As she starts to stand up the second disc flips over with the force of a shot snapping through its center. She turns to stare blank faced at James, who answers her with a sunny smile._

_“Competitive!” He chirrups._

_“Come out, you sneaky assholes,” Veronica says, flipping James off with one hand. “We lose this round of hide-and-seek.”_

_Lance Serrano pops up from the sand barely ten feet away from their armored vehicle. He favors his sister with a wide grin. She stares at him. “How the hell,” she sputters, “did you get so close to our position?”_

_“By being a sneaky asshole!” He says, voice full of a sunshine and glee. He yelps when a rock smacks into his helmet, rocking him forward. “Hey!”_

_Ryan Kinkade stands a scarce four feet from Lance’s position, his face ashy with desert dust and camouflage paint. He scowls heavily at Lance. “You started early.”_

_“I started at the beep, like we agreed,” Lance argues. “Don’t be a sore loser.”_

_Kinkade throws another rock at him while James laughs so hard he curls over on himself._ ] 

griffinwings  
1,298,009 likes

I’m pretty sure this is how snipers flirt #wargames #trainingdays #stupidsnipertricks

View 123,001 comments

PidgeontheGreenPaladin: @deadshotLance you want to a real challenge you need to go up against my brother.

killingtime: holy shit. Those shots are fucking _unreal_. How the fuck did you keep the muzzle flash from giving you away

deadshotLance: @PidgeontheGreenPaladin deal. @killingtime … you do know that a suppressed M4 only has the muzzle flare problem when you fire blanks, right?

RyanKinkadeOfficial: If it’s a challenge your brother is looking for, @PidgeontheGreenPaladin, we can both go up against him.

Solarislion: it is very very obvious that these boys are not firing blanks. either of them feel like hitting me up for some target practice?

ResistanceisButyl: @PidgeontheGreenPaladin are you _trying_ to get me killed?

frankexchangeofviews: @killingtime, bruh go home and play with your toy guns. the real operators are talking now

yukikaze: how much do we pay to see what they get up to, tucked away in the tall grass together

killingtime: @frankexchangeofviews, say that to my face, fuckwit

PidgeontheGreenPaladin: @ResistanceisButyl, it’s just Lance. You can take him.

ResistanceisButyl: @PidgeontheGreenPaladin, I will straight up die. @deadshotLance, what’s your longest CK?

No-more-mister-nice-guy: LCDR Serrano could tell me to nose dive off a cliff and I’d be shouting ‘ma’am, yes ma’am’ on the way down.

griffinwings: @killingtime, @frankexchangeofviews, either one of you gets near copypasta territory and I will block your asses. Do not test me.

RyanKinkadeOfficial: @ResistanceisButyl 3,540m using A-Max .50 ammo

deadshotLance: @ResistanceisButyl, Ryan’s is 3,781m using standard .50 BMG rounds, which, you know, makes it _more_ bad ass, as if you needed that.

killingtime: @griffinwings, ye’ssir

breeeliss: i like my men like i like my coffee: steaming hot and powerful enough to kill a man from half a world away

ResistanceisButyl: @PidgeontheGreenPaladin, yeah, no I would die. @RyanKinkadeOfficial, @deadshotLance I swear this is like when married couples remember each other’s SSNs or something.

therealRizavi: @griffinwings, your snipers are flirting again

frankexchangeofviews: @griffinwings, yes sir.

* * *

unreliablewitness reblogged from ResistanceisButyl:

QuestionableEthics:

Has anyone else had @ResistanceisButyl show up in the comments of their fics and offer **extremely technical** criticisms? Like. Very technical. Not saying that I have a problem with concrit, because buddy let me tell you how tricky it is to write alien smut when you haven’t actually … you know.

I’m just a little … curious.

*

rapid-random-response-unit

oh baby, you’re new here, aren’t you? ResistanceisButyl is Matt Holt and yeah, he does that sometimes.

(which @ResistanceisButyl how do you _know_ all this? I have questions.)

*

roundab00t:

don’t @ him unless you want to summon him. He actually responds to people on here.

*

ResistanceisButyl:

You make me sound like some sort of Cthulhu monster. 

And I know these things because I am a scientist and have conducted significant field research.

223,901 notes  
Tagged: #Defenders of Earth, #fanfiction notes, #Matt did you just call yourself a slut for science?

* * *

It’s the second time in as many weeks that Shiro is arrested on the threshold of the Garrison lounge. Lance lies across one of the tacky grey couches like someone had spilled a box of pipe cleaners—all long limbs and sharp joints—dead to the world around him. As Shiro watches he shifts in his sleep, the MFE-Ares undersuit riding up his ribs to reveal a sweep of tan skin and a rather spectacular bruise blooming along his side. Lance groans something incoherent and shifts again.

The entire thing makes Shiro twinge with sympathetic aches.

Moving as quietly as he can he reaches out to shake Lance’s shoulder. Lance groans again and curls away from him.

“Leave him,” Veronica says quietly, the softness of her words carrying as she stands on the threshold of the lounge. “He’s had a long mission.”

Shiro pulls away and turns to stare at her uncomprehendingly. “Mission?” He repeats. “Voltron had no mission today.”

Veronica shrugs as she moves to make herself tea. “Voltron didn’t have an _official_ mission,” she says, “but the Garrison did. He was sent out under Lieutenant Griffin’s command to deal with a small resistance force. Mission went well.”

“Resistance force?” Shiro says, feeling completely off-center. “There’s been no reports of Galra activity—.”

“Not Galra,” Veronica interjects. Lance murmurs something indistinct in his sleep and she makes a face but lowers her voice: “Human,” she takes a sip of her tea and regards him over her cup. “Earth First: Humanity United,” the sneer in her voice as she says the name is a tangible thing, “you’ve been given the reports.”

Shiro slides into a seat across from her and resists the urge to rub a hand through his hair. “I thought they were just a fringe movement.”

“A fringe movement with an impressive stockpile of weapons,” Veronica says with a grimace. “Bolstered by the anti-human rhetoric put out by certain media outlets. Pidge caught their communications while she was working on that secured satellite network, kicked it up to Commander Holt.”

Translation: yelled it across the labs in the middle of the night.

“Why not send Voltron,” Shiro asks. “They’re a small, mobile task force and if anything happened the Lions ca—”

“That’s exactly why _not_ Voltron. We can’t rely upon the Lions for everything, particularly this mess,” Veronica says, cutting him off again. He frowns at her. He’s got the oddest sense that she’s irritated with him though he has no idea why. “And besides, the optics would be bad. We need our allies to see us taking out our own trash, not relying on Voltron to do it.”

“But you sent Lance,” and this is the point that makes something burn in his throat like acid. He’s missing something, and the feeling rankles.

Veronica looks at him over her cup for a long, long moment. “Lieutenant Griffin requested additional sniper support. Lance volunteered.”

“Lance _volunteered_ ,” Shiro repeats. The entire conversation has him feeling like he’s three beats behind and stupid with it. “But why take Lance? UEMS has other snipers.”

“Lance has the highest marks with the FN FNAR 7.62, FN-M2HB, the M21 SWS 7.65, and the M39 EMR,” Veronica replies. She blows on her cup even though Shiro’s certain her tea has long gone cold. “He’s also—now—got the highest confirmed kill count at 102.”

Shiro doesn’t quite know what to do with that information. Doesn’t know how to square the idea of sunny, chirpy Lance with the image of a sniper with a confirmed kill count. He shakes off the thought. “What if Voltron was needed? We weren’t contacted.”

Veronica stands and walks to the little lounge sink. “Paladin Kogane was informed. He stated that there was an alternative pilot configuration available if Voltron was needed or something happened to Lance.” She puts her cup away with a soft little _clink_. Shiro can’t read her expression when she turns to look at him. 

“Don’t wake Lance,” she repeats. “He’s had a long day.”

* * *


	4. blue on blue contact

[image: _Takashi Shirogane stands with his back to a desert sunrise that paints the sky in pale pinks and gold. The light gleams along his prosthetic and half obscures his expression, but not so much that it hides the small, fond smile or the way his eyes are soft with open affection. His hand is buried in a blue and black wolf’s fur._ ]

nottheblackpaladin(official)  
91,129 likes

Mornings #desertsunrise #photography #nofilter

View 873 comments

LivewareProblem: that’s a really nice shot, buddy!

nottheblackpaladin(official): @LivewareProblem thanks

rubricofruin: so, are you two fuckin’? ‘cause it looks like you two are fuckin’

empiricist: @rubricofruin can you get any ruder?

rubricofruin: @empiricist probably, but I’m just asking what everyone else wants to know

griffinwings: cute

* * *

(5) News Updates in _War and Politics_

6 days ago  
Lieutenant James Griffin tapped to lead new Garrison counter-terrorism taskforce.

4 days ago  
Diplomatic meeting with Olkari representatives disrupted by anti-alien extremists.

2 days ago  
Media analysts report spike in anti-alien rhetoric among rural, displaced, and refugee populations.

22 hours ago  
Paladins of Voltron help rebuild key transportation architecture.

13 hours ago  
Galaxy Garrison silent on remembrance plans as anniversary of Sendak’s attack approaches.

* * *

[Image: _a series of three pictures. First, Lance looking at Allura as she watches something on the horizon. His mouth is twisted in fond, rueful smile like he’s looking at something impossibly precious that he can’t have. Second, Allura watching Lance as he looks at something off frame. Her eyes are soft and full of gentle affection. The third, both of them standing on Blue’s paw, backlit by the setting sun, the light obscuring their profiles—their expressions blurred by the glare of sunset._ ]

InaGegnHernaðurinu  
6,320 likes

Mær er mér tiðari  
en manni hveim  
ungum i árdaga.  
Ása ok álfa,  
Þat vill engi maðr  
At vit sátt sém #freyruponseeinggerðr #myphotography #unfiltered 

View 1,298 comments

PidgeontheGreenPaladin: at least these two dorks are off being gross and cute on someone else’s missions for once

RyanKinkadeOfficial: @PidgeontheGreenPaladin I think they are charming.

happyidiottalk: I hate to be the one to meme this, but: get you a man who looks at you the way Lance looks at Allura. 

PidgeontheGreenPaladin: @RyanKinkadeOfficial You would.

Vixenheart: I have never so badly wanted to yell ‘now kiss’ at two strangers.

* * *

yukikaze reblogged from You-Naughty-Monsters:

[Video: _Ryan Kinkade and Lance Serrano wrestle in a slow-moving river. They’ve both stripped down to just the pants of their under-armour. James Griffin sits on a large rock in the middle of the river. He’s similarly stripped down, his hair plastered to his forehead and dripping down his back. An impressive blue-black bruise wraps around his ribs, nearly obscuring the tattoo of dog-tags that winds its way down his ribs. Ina Leifsdottir leans against his back, stripped down to a bra and flight under-armour pants, with her cheek pillowed against his shoulder. She appears to be asleep. James shouts random encouragements and laughs when they both swear at him._

_Eventually Ryan gets an arm under Lance’s leg and flips him into the water. He goes down with an impressive splash and yelp._

_“The champion!” calls Nadia from behind the camera._

_Ryan obligingly flexes for her until Lance erupts from the water and drags him under the surface. An occasional elbow or foot can be seen above the water as they continue to wrestle._

_“Aren’t you going to stop them?” Nadia asks, and James shakes his head. He looks tired but content._

_Nadia turns the camera around to give it a mournful look, “look how he doesn’t love us.”_

_Behind her the surface of the river has gone still._ ]

 

subtle-shift-in-emphasis:

Videos from MFE-Ares’ pilots WCN accounts \- 4/?

*

lostinthedreaming:

I swear I just watched Ryan Kinkade and Lance Serrano murder each other while their squad leader was too lazy to do anything.

*

Kiss-This-Then:

Have you seen the pace of the missions they’ve been pulling? He’s Tired. Let him rest. 

*

feelingsaboutrobots:

Is it just me or has Serrano been hanging out a _lot_ with the MFE-Ares team. Like. _a lot_.

*

roundab00t:

it’s not just you.

*

yukikaze:

Oh my god. I think I just died of dehydration. 

3,910 notes  
Tagged: #MFE-Ares pilots #and now Lance Serrano?, #I guess there’s been a team switch?, #thank you Nadia, #fuckin drown me please, #behold the eyecandy

* * *

Allura pauses in the middle of the hangers, trying to look for Lance without _looking_ like she’s searching for Lance. She startles when she feels a hand on her arm tugging her to the side, out of the way a pushback tug. The driver shouts his thanks and she waves at him. She blinks up at James Griffin who watches her thoughtfully, a furrow between his dark eyes.

“Are you lost, Princess,” he asks quietly, like asking any louder is beyond his abilities at the moment.

She thinks about lying for about half a second, but for all James looks like someone has punched him with the shadows under his eyes so dark, his gaze is still alarmingly sharp. He cocks his head to the side as if he can see her think about lying to him and she fights not to flush. “Perhaps,” she confesses. “I’m looking for Lance?”

James makes thoughtful noise and jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “Probably with Ryan playing with the M39 EMR,” he says. He rubs at his temples as if he has a headache. “I won’t let them take it on missions—too fucking loud for one thing, so they’ve been fucking about with it here—never mind the amount of ammo that thing eats.”

Allura bites her lips to keep from laughing at his aggrieved tone. He gives her a narrow-eyed stare. She coughs lightly before offering, “That sounds … inconsiderate?”

“It’s a fucking nightmare of paperwork is what it is. DLMS takes a dim view of excessive ammo use outside of mission perimeters and one of these days they are going to send an _accountant_ ,” he grumbles before tugging her along with him. She tucks her hand in the crook of his elbow and he blinks at her. “Oh. For all the fucking. Fuck me, I’m so rude,” he mutters, “Princess, I apologize, and my language is—”

She throws up a hand as he starts to apologize, incoherent and still littered with profanity, “it’s fine, Lieutenant, I’m not offended,” when he gives her a disbelieving stare she smiles at him, “I have heard a swear word once or twice before.”

He closes his eyes and sighs. She can see the tension trembling in his shoulders, along the pursed set of his mouth. “Still,” he says. “I’m normally better than this. May I escort you to the firing range, Princess.”

Allura can’t help but laugh, charmed by his frustrated politeness. “Yes,” she says, “you may, Lieutenant.” 

They walk in silence for a long while, the hanger loud around them with the sounds of construction, repairs, and general chaos. She watches James from the corners of her eyes as he deftly guides her past the MFE-Ares, the FFR-31 Sylph—a sharp angled piece of work, and a million other bits of equipment, personnel, and miscellaneous machinery needed to keep the Galaxy Garrison moving ever forward. He looks tired, she thinks, run ragged but determined not show it.

“May I ask a question?” He says so suddenly she blinks, slowing without realizing it. James half turns towards her, ever solicitous. “You don’t have to answer it.”

“Now I’m curious,” she says with smile to remove any sting from her words.

“What’s going on with you and Kogane?” He asks bluntly, his expression suggests he’s too drained to find a delicate way to phrase it.

“I don’t think I understand the question,” Allura replies. It’s a lie, of course, but she’s been too well trained in the art of dissembling and politics to give up her cover so easily.

James gives her look that suggests he knows what she’s about and it exhausts him further. Allura feels momentarily ashamed to add to his burden. “Please don’t insult my intelligence, Princess,” he says, “you’re barely friendlier with him than _I_ am and I’d leave him on a glacier for the bears to eat if I thought I’d get away with it.”

But only momentarily ashamed.

“I hardly think I’m _that_ , erm,” she peters off, unsure of how to continue. He gives her a dry look and she resists the urge to make a face. “We have a perfectly functional relationship.”

“Out—fucking—standing,” James says with an amused snort. “You are familiar with the concept of ‘damning with faint praise’, right?”

Allura can’t resist the urge to roll her eyes and shakes his arm a little. “Why are you asking, Lieutenant,” she asks with a sigh. “It’s hardly like you to gossip.”

The grin she gets in response is swift and heartbreaking in its sudden charm. “Now I know you haven’t been spending time with my team,” he tells her seriously as he holds a door open for her, “because you’d know that’s a filthy lie.”

She gives him a narrow-eyed, contemplative look. “I’m still not certain that’s true,” she tells him with enough tartness that it makes him laugh. “It’s still an unusual amount of interest from you.”

He gives a sort of aborted shrug in response, more like a quick jerk of the shoulder as if anything else would take more energy than he currently had available. “Consider it idle curiosity,” he says, tone suspiciously dismissive, “nothing more.”

“I don’t think there’s much that is idle about you, Lieutenant James Griffin, leader of the MFE-Areas squadron, leader of the UEMS’ joint counter-terrorism taskforce,” Allura says, laying out each title like a winning card, “the media’s current darling and by all accounts the golden boy of the Garrison.”

He wrinkles his nose at the last two—the look is distressingly cute, “Jesus Christ, Princess, stop making me sound like such a spotlight ranger,” he waves her off when she opens her mouth to demand a translation, “Don’t worry about it. Anyway, I don’t think I’m either of the last two anymore, thanks to Nadia’s obsession with making an idiot of me any time I get drunk.”

She pats his arm consolingly and he gives her a look that is alarmingly close to Iverson’s distrustful eyeball. “I’m quite certain that Nadia’s, erm, antics have only increased your popularity.”

“That’s a thing I try to pretend isn’t happening,” he says with a dry, acerbic tone that she’s starting to think is his default when flustered and trying to hide it. “The entire,” he makes a little hand gesture that manages to be both rude and dismissive, “fan club thing. I’m a pilot, not a member of a boyband.”

“You could always try not drinking,” she comments just to see his reaction. James cuts her a sharp look as he holds open the door to the firing range. The sound of Nadia’s delighted laughter and Lance’s voice, indistinct but clearly crowing about something, sweeps over them with the heavy thrum of Ryan’s shots like a heartbeat under them.

“Not drink?” James asks, “while trying to lead these jokers? Princess are you trying to get me to have a catastrophic heart attack?”

Allura blinks and then sputters out a disbelieving laugh as Lance pumps his fist in apparently victory as the range’s overhead monitors display the shot groupings—his, a tidy collection of shots so tightly compacted around the center of the head that it’s a single gaping, unsettling hole; Ryan’s, nearly as tight but with two conspicuously off target so they looked like eyes over an open mouth. Ryan frowns at the monitors shaking his head.

Nadia sits on the bar of the range, legs swinging. “Nope,” she sings out, “Lance won, maybe not fair and square, but he still won.”

Lance grins so wide Allura’s almost certain that it meets up around the back of his head like a demented zipper. Ryan sighs and shakes his head before very carefully putting down his rifle. Lance continues to beam up at him, pleased and so, so smug. Allura presses a hand to her mouth as Ryan fits an arm around Lance’s back and dips him low before pressing a smacking kiss to his lips.

“Done,” Ryan says as he pulls Lance back up.

“What are you idiots doing?” James asked in a tone that manages to bundle together a sort of aggrieved whine with a demand for an explanation.

“Introducing our resident FNG to the tools of democracy,” Ryan says, his arms still comfortably looped around Lance’s waist. Lance rolls his eyes expressively.

James gives them both a deeply skeptical look. “I’m entirely positive that your lips do not actually classify as tools of democracy,” he says while Allura hiccups out a helpless giggle behind him. 

“Ryan and Lance made a bet,” Nadia says, her smile wide and bright and far too innocent to be believable. “Loser had to give the winner a kiss.”

“That,” James says slowly as if he’s trying to work out a way to explain a complex concept to a particularly slow child, “doesn’t quite work.”

“Well, _I_ wasn’t going to kiss them,” Nadia says definitively. 

“It was very sad,” Lance says as he eels out of Ryan’s arms and drapes himself over James. “It hurt our fee—Allura! Hi, um.”

Allura presses her hand harder to her mouth as Lance stutters off into incoherency and James heaves out something that sounds like the bastard lovechild of a groan and sigh. Ryan puts one large, dark hand over Lance’s mouth effectively cutting off the stream of babbling and Lance collapses against him.

“Are you here to collect him?” Ryan asks seriously. Allura isn’t sure she’s ever seen him do anything other than be serious. “He said he didn’t have anything else to do today, was he wrong?” Ryan tilts Lance around until he can stare down at him, dark eyes narrowing. “Are you shamming?”

“Oh!” Allura waves her hands in front of her. “No! I was just, erm,” Allura looks down and bites her lip. She hadn’t quite thought this one all the way through. It’s Nadia’s little head tilt, like she’s spotted a new puzzle and she hasn’t quite figured out how to slot it together yet, that has Allura talking before she quite knows what she’s going to say. “I was merely wondering what there was to do for, erm, recreation.”

At this both Nadia _and_ Ryan give her contemplative looks. Beside her James huffs out a breath that could almost be considered a laugh. “Now you’ve done it,” he tells her. “They’ll never let you go now.”

Lance squirms in Ryan’s hold but goes limp when he remains implacable. Nadia grins, her teeth very white under the bright lights of the firing range. “Have you ever played pool, Princess?”

* * *

[video: _Allura of Altea stands with a pool cue in both hands in front of billiards table with an expression of deep concentration. Ryan Kinkade appears to be quietly explaining the game to her. When she nods, he steps away from the table. James Griffin leans against the other side holding a rack of billiard balls, his grin is cocky, bordering on arrogant._

_“Are you sure about this, Princess,” he says. “We can start off with something easier, snooker maybe?”_

_“Snooker is not easier, jackass,” Lance Serrano interjects from where he’s leaning against a wall._

_James places rack down and gently pulls the frame from the balls. He spins the frame around one finger, all lazy arrogance, before saying, “I guess that just depends on how good you are, isn’t it, Paladin?”_

_“Why am I only ‘Paladin’ to you when you are being a show-off jackass?” Lance complains._

_“No, Lieutenant,” Allura interrupts. She looks very determined. “Ryan explained the rules to …’eight-ball’, so that’s what we’ll play.”_

_James slides the frame away and pulls a cue down with one hand. He waves at the table. “Ladies first.”_

_Allura cuts him a sharp glance but doesn’t bother with an answer. She leans forward and delicately lines up her shot—Ryan says something too low for the camera to pick up and she nods. At the crack of the break, she grins. James starts to swear with a depth and creativity that underscores his military service._

_“I believe I am stripes then?” She asks over his swearing with the sweetest smile._

_“How_ the fuck _did you manage to sink three of the same set in the first rack,” he demands._ ]

therealRizavi  
12,901 likes

who knew corrupting royalty could be so much fun? (me. i knew.) #downtime #babypoolshark #imsoproud

1,890 comments

griffinwings: I still maintain she used magic

RyanKinkadeOfficial: @griffinwings you are such a bad loser, brother

frankexchangeofviews: bruh, she kicked your ass and, lbr, I would let her kick my ass _a n y_ time.

InaGegnHernaðurinu: Ryan is a very good teacher.

PidgeontheGreenLion: not pictured: Lance quietly losing his mind

halcyon-quintants: we stan a queen

deadshotLance: @PidgeontheGreenLion how do you even know? You weren’t there!

PidgeontheGreenLion: @deadshotLance I have eyes everywhere

ResistanceisButyl: @PidgeontheGreenLion stop using the security feed to spy on your teammates

* * *

##### Tensions Flare as Anniversary of Sendak’s Invasion Approaches

Local police, assisted by Garrison forces, dispersed a crowd of anti-alien protesters who converged upon the Galaxy Garrison’s main base. Organizers of the protest claimed the march was a peaceful demonstration against the growing ‘alienification’ of Earth and a call for humanity to take back it’s government. Eye witnesses, however, claimed protesters threw stones, destroyed private property, and chanted isolationist slogans.

[image: _A group of protesters clash with police forces, many of which hold up rotating holo-projections—the words of which have been blurred for decency._ ]

Law enforcement reported three arrests for attempted arson. Civil government officials deplored the violence, but some suggested that the protesters demands should, at least in part, be heard.

_click for more_

4,902 comments 

Sullivan @humanityunited  
[ _this comment has been removed by the moderation team_ ]

* * *

[image: _James lays splayed across one of the Garrison couches, head back against the cushions, mouth open with the impression he might start drooling at any moment. Ina lies draped across his chest, one hand dangling towards the floor, the other wrapped around Lance’s wrist. Lance is curled between James and the back of the couch, face smashed against James’ shoulder. Allura leans over the back of the couch looking fond as she runs her fingers through Lance’s hair._ ]

RyanKinkadeOfficial  
23,934 likes

Naptime #defendersofearth #photography #dayinthelife #jamessnoreslikeadieselengine @deadshotLance @griffinwings @InaGegnHernaðurinu

1,899 comments

griffinwings: will you stop exposing me like this

RyanKinkadeOfficial: @griffinwings never

therealRizavi: oh my god look at these cute dorks @deadshotLance @griffinwings @InaGegnHernaðurinu

therealRizavi: wait, why can’t I tag Allura? This is bullshit. @deadshotLance get your girlfriend to get an account

deadshotLance: @therealRizavi she’s not my girlfriend and she’ll get one when she wants one. Don’t harass her about this. I mean it.

Charming-but-Irrational: @deadshotLance buddy, pal, I don’t know what to tell you but that is a girl who definitely _wants_ to be your girlfriend, get on that.

someone-elses-problem: @Charming-but-Irrational you leave them be to their epic, slow-burn love story

DeathandGravity: @someone-elses-problem people don’t exist just for you to play voyeur on their complicated love lives

someone-elses-problem: @DeathandGravity the hell they don’t. What else am I supposed to do with all this popcorn?

* * *

Gravitas-free-zone reblogged from EightRoundsRapid

[Gif 1: _Hunk points to a massive structure of steel and concrete that arches towards the sky. A shadow sweeps over him as the Yellow Lion flies overhead with something in its mouth. The Yellow Lion gently settles a support strut into place as Olkari engineers cheer._ ]

[Gif 2: _Hunk steadily turning darker and darker as his blush deepens while reporters shout questions concerning his relationship with Balmeran representative Shay. Eventually he puts his hands to his cheeks and slides down his chair until only the top of his head is visible over the interview table._ ]

[Gif 3: _Hunk stands in front of a ring of Olkari and Balmeran engineers. His hands move emphatically as he explains something, making the holoprojection from his wrist omni-tool jerk erratically._ ]

[Gif 4: _A little girl bounds up to Hunk waving a stuffed yellow lion and a piece of paper. Hunk promptly drops to his knees and signs her paper while talking animatedly to her stuffed lion._ ] 

[Gif 5: _Hunk pulls back from the engine of an AW-Cruiser to rummage through a pile of parts next to him. He’s stripped down to an undershirt, an oil smudge streaked across one cheek, and the light catches the light sheen of sweat on his shoulders and chest as he moves. Romelle lies draped across the top of the cruiser. When he rubs at his forehead, causing his biceps to flex, she sighs._ ]

[Gif 6: _Reporters shout something at Keith Kogane, who slowly cocks his head to the side, his eyes glittering queerly. Hunk appears from nowhere and heaves Keith off his feet before walking off with him. Keith’s gone as limp as a kitten in his arms_.]

thelastresort:

Get you a man who can do both / part [3/?] of Defenders of Earth gifsets

*

EightRoundsRapid:

We are all Romelle.

*

Gravitas-free-zone:

Oh my god that last one. 

That’s right, you collect your man, Hunk-baby, before he mauls them.

323,903 notes  
Tagged: #Paladins of Voltron, #Tsuyoshi ‘Hunk’ Garrett, #Keith Kogane, #heith, #it is the cutest ship, #i will die with it

* * *

Keith jolts at the soft knock that manages to echo through the little room he’s claimed for himself to write reports—so many reports, no one told him being the Black Paladin meant so many bullshit reports—go over intel, and just get a chance to be quiet and _think_. Silence, he’s learned with a certain degree of chagrin, is a rare and precious commodity on a major military base. He looks up and blinks as Hunk fidgets on the threshold. His surprise must have translated into some sort of expression because Hunk twists his hands together anxiously.

“Hey,” Hunk says quietly. “I don’t mean to interrupt if you’re doing, you know, important Black Paladin stuff….”

Keith shoves the tablet to one side under a stack of other things he’s probably supposed to have read before tomorrow’s Morning Report and will have almost certainly only skimmed and waves a hand. “No!” He says and then winces at his too-loud, too-eager tone. “No, it’s just bullshit paperwork.”

“Don’t let Griffin hear you say that,” Hunk says with a small grin, “you know how he feels about ‘proper military order’ and all of that.”

Keith laughs at Hunk’s air quotes. Hopping up on the little desk he shoves the chair towards Hunk with one foot. “Is something wrong?” he asks, already mentally running through anything that might have gone sideways and sent Hunk to _him_ opposed to … anyone else really. “Did I forget something?”

Because that’s a thing that happens more than Keith likes to admit. They are all running sleep-deprived and sixty bullet point items behind on their collective and individual to-do lists. There’s more logistical work than he’d ever dreamed, more _politics_ that somehow demand his presence—and then there’s fucking _Lieutenant_ James Griffin making it a point to rub his face in every task left incomplete, every report left unwritten, every file left unread. 

Some days he wishes he could throw the entire thing back at Shiro and go hide out among the Blades under the guise of helping with their rebuilding projects, but Shiro has his own command and worries now.

Hunk’s mouth twists, unhappy and unsure. “No,” he says, and suddenly turns as if to go, “never mind, it’s nothing. It’s stupid.”

“Are you sure?” Keith asks. Hunk’s expression crumples further, even more unhappy, and Keith can’t stop the way that makes his own face thin down into a tight, worried frown. “Because it doesn’t sound like you’re sure.”

“It’s just—” Hunk cuts himself off and looks down for a second before drawing in a huge breath. “Have you talked to Lance lately?”

Keith blinks. 

“We just had a mission,” he says slowly, watching Hunk’s face scrunch up. Not the right answer, then. Not that Keith really thinks he has any correct answers when it comes to Lance. Keith shrugs. “We don’t really … talk.”

Hunk sighs, “Yeah, I know,” he throws up his hands when Keith squirms uncomfortably, “just an observation, not an accusation,” he clarifies. He drops into the chair and looks up at Keith so earnestly that he feels pinned in place. “I’ve just noticed that Lance has been hanging out with the MFE-Ares pilots. A lot.”

There’s an emotional undercurrent to that question; Keith can hear it in the way Hunk’s voice lilts upwards in distress, he can see it in the way Hunk won’t quite meet his eyes. But he’s not sure where the fault lines are, where the emotional landmines have been set. Hunk blinks big, dark eyes at him and Keith gets the feeling that being careful will only get him so far.

“He’s … social?” Keith offers, testing.

“I don’t think this is just social visits,” Hunk says lowly. Worried, Keith realizes, that low, hesitant tone is what Hunk sounds like when he’s worried and trying not to show it. There’s a faint note of disbelief in his words, like he’s trying to talk himself out of his concerns. It twists something right under Keith’s ribs to listen to Hunk try to gaslight himself out of his own worry.

“What do you mean?” Keith asks, but something is twigging at him, like a lightbulb trying to come on with a faulty connection.

Hunk shrugs, and it’s a gesture he manages to do with his entire body from his eyebrows to his toes. “He keeps falling asleep in the lounge,” Hunk says, still not looking at Keith, “he eats everything not nailed down but he’s never around for normal DFAC hours. He’s got bruises he forgets about, a whole new set of calluses, and his sister is starting to breathe fire at anyone who looks at him funny.”

Now there is a bit of information that sends a bolt of ice straight through Keith. Veronica Serrano is one person he does not want out for his blood. 

“You think he’s doing extra training with them?” Keith asks. He can see how that would worry Hunk. Despite everything they’ve been through there’s still an edge of concern to Hunk that somehow, he’s not quite _enough_ as a paladin—not enough of a pilot, not enough of a fighter—despite his brilliant engineering mind or his incredible courage. “I mean, if that’s what you’re worried about, we coul—”

“No,” Hunk says sharply and then winces when he looks up at Keith. “Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to do more training with you, but I don’t think this is just _training_ ,” Hunk sighs and looks away. “He looks like you did,” he continues softly, “when you were trying to be both a Blade and a Paladin. Tired, stressed, always in pain and hiding it.”

They sit staring at each other for a long moment. There’s an old hurt there, Keith thinks, one that didn’t quite heal right like a fractured bone left to heal without being set—something that’ll ache with every shift of the barometer. Hunk’s gaze slides away from his, mouth twisting into an unhappy line again and Keith knows he’s about to apologize. Keith also knows he absolutely cannot handle listening to Hunk apologize to him for Keith’s mistakes.

“You think he’s running missions with Griffin,” he says suddenly. Says it so quickly the words nearly tangle together coming out of his mouth. And once he hears it, listens to the order of the words, he knows it to be true.

The lightbulb flickers on, the connection of his memory holding true. “That sonuvabitch,” he breathes, hate and a certain type of wondering respect for sheer _audacity_ of the move. “That complete fucking _asshole_.”

Hunk’s eyebrows try to join his hairline, “Uh,” he says nervously, “you want to show your work with the rest of the class?”

“James motherfucking Griffin,” Keith says, still breathless with the flush of rage sweeping through him. He feels like fury has a fist around his lungs, throttling all the air from them. Grabbing his tablet, he starts flipping through folders. He shifts over on the table to make room for Hunk as he squeezes in next to Keith. “I just thought,” he mutters as he thumbs open what he thinks is the right file and starts skimming. “It was supposed to be _one_ time…”

“ _What_ was supposed to be one time?” Hunk asks—his voice hard and cold enough that it makes Keith look up, startled at the shift. Hunk looks back at him, serious and concerned, before repeating: “What was supposed to be one time?”

“Griffin,” Keith can’t help the way the name twists in his mouth. “ _Jamie_ requested additional sniper support for a covert operation. Lance was the only one who met the specs for mission personnel.”

Specs that Keith is now almost entirely certain Griffin wrote with Lance’s range scores up on a separate screen and a hand down his pants at how clever he was being. That _bastard_.

Hunk hunches in closer around him, reading over his shoulder. At any other time having someone who isn’t Shiro crowding into his space would make him flinch, but Hunk’s a rock in the middle of the thundering tide of his rage. A calm still point to hold onto as the surge of emotion, something he’d thought he’d had tamped down under his skin by now, yanks his thoughts all over. 

He lets Hunk reach around him to scroll down the file, “TDA—temporary duty assignment, for all essential personnel as mission parameters are met,” Hunk reads. “A TDA is only six months maximum, so where does it….” Hunk mutters, almost in Keith’s ear. “Motherfucker.”

Keith can’t help the laugh that burbles out of him, a rasping, broken thing, at Hunk’s profanity. 

“That’s sneaky,” Hunk says, an impressed edge to his tone. “A TDA with a switch to a PCA as soon as the mission went from as-needed support to a permanent taskforce. Poached Lance right out from under you unless you blocked the PCA. And only gave you a forty-eight hour window to file the objection paperwork.”

Keith lets the tablet fall against his knees as he stares at the blank wall and its institutional grey-white paint. “I’m going to kill him,” he says wonderingly. “I’m actually going to kill him.”

“Yeah,” Hunk says. “Pretty sure that’s a felony.”

* * *

[image: _Lance Serrano and Ryan Kinkade sit topless on a modified reclining medical chair with stickers of local punk bands stuck all over it. A tattoo artist sits to one side looking slightly stunned. Lance hangs draped over Ryan’s shoulder, his grin bright and delighted, as he presses his arm against Ryan’s. On their biceps are matching tattoos of the profile of Death in tattered robes staring into the distance with a beautifully rendered FN-M2HB rifle on its back, one skeletal hand holding the strap. Lance’s skin is brilliantly red and inflamed around the edges of the deep black lines. Ryan’s dark skin looks bruised but otherwise hides the angry newness of the tattoo. Both of tattoos gleam with a faint layer of healing gel. Ryan’s expression is stoic, but faintly amused and fond around the edges._ ]

23,011 likes  
deadshotLance

Sniper bonding! #tattoos #snipertattoos #oneshotonekill #thathurtlessthanadvertised #rideordie #stupidmilitaryshit @RyanKinkadeOfficial

View 3,329 comments:

griffinwings: @deadshotLance @RyanKinkadeOfficial if those get infected I am strangling you both

deadshotLance: @griffinwings yes, daddy

griffinwings: @deadshotLance don’t start

homoidiotic: Okay, but can we please take a minute to appreciate LTJG Kinkade here? Every part of him is blessed, but those arms? I'm _sweating_

PidgeontheGreenPaladin: @deadshotLance you just love to double down on the poor life choices, don’t you?

roundab00t: :eyes: _y e s, d a d d y_ :eyes:

deadshotLance: @PidgeontheGreenPaladin given the amount of ink your brother has are you sure you want to be making that dig?

PidgeontheGreenPaladin: @deadshotLance @ResistanceisButyl Matt doesn’t have tattoos

ResistanceisButyl: uuuuhhhh. (@deadshotLance @RyanKinkadeOfficial I’ve got aquaphor, come grab it)

breeeliss: never in my life did i think i'd want to lick a man’s biceps but here we are and here i am

deadshotLance: @ResistanceisButyl you are my favorite Holt

RyanKinkadeOfficial: @ResistanceisButyl thanks man

* * *

##### UEMS Counter-Terrorism Taskforce Mobilized to Repelled Threat to Energy Grid

A joint-UEMS and Volton Coalition press conference revealed that the Garrison counter-terrorism task-forced lead by Lieutenant James Griffin successfully neutralized a domestic terrorist attack against the South-West energy grid. While neither Lieutenant James Griffin nor members of his team—the complete roster of which remains confidential despite press requests for task-force member identities—were available at the press conference, both UEMS and representatives from the Voltron Coalition were glowing in their praise.

[image: _Matt Holt, standing behind a podium in full rebel armour with his hair pulled back into a long auburn braid, addresses an unruly press corps. A UEMS admiral, identified as one Admiral Donnal J. Udina, stands slightly behind him looking like he’d been sucking lemons._ ]

While joint-UEMS and Voltron Coalition representatives were hesitant to state who ordered the operation, both stated the mission was run with remarkable precision that avoided civilian casualties and limited collateral damage.

_click more_

938 comments

Uliver @no-fixed-abode  
Is it just me, or does no one seem to know who the task-force belongs to?

* * *

**1-20 of 2,341 Works in Lance Serrano/Ryan Kinkade**

back to the hedgerows where the bodies are mounted by shrike  
Defenders RPF  
 **Graphic Depictions of Violence** , **Mature** ,  Lance Serrano/Ryan Kinkade, Ryan Kinkade, Lance Serrano, James Griffin, Keith Kogane, Takashi Shirogane, Allura of Altea, Tsuyoshi ‘Hunk’ Garrett, Pidge Gunderson, Ina Leifsdottir, Veronica Serrano, Nadia Rizavi, Canon Typical Violence, Friends To Lovers, Pining, Slow Burn, Hurt/Comfort, missions gone wrong, i spent way too long studying sniper videos for this, excessive use of military jargon, these boys are in love, fucking fight me

That maps are of time, not place, so far as the army  
Happens to be concerned—the reason being,  
Is one which need not delay us. Again, you know  
There are three kinds of tree, three only, the fir and the poplar,  
And those which have bushy tops to; and lastly  
That things only seem to be things.

(Henry Reed, _Judging Distances_ )

Language: Universal Basic Words: 162,120 Chapters: 12/12 Comments: 921 Kudos: 2352 Bookmarks: 361 Hits: 42082

 

between the wars (stay) by yukikaze  
Defenders RPF  
 **Graphic Depictions of Violence** , **Explicit** ,  Lance Serrano/Ryan Kinkade, Ryan Kinkade, Lance Serrano, Canon Typical Violence, Plot What Plot, Manhandling, Oral Sex, sloppy blowjobs, Riming, Anal Fingering, face down ass up thats the way we like to WHAT, Anal Sex, Spit As Lube, inappropriate lubricants as lube, trust me okay, Makeshift Gags, Begging, Tooth Rotting Fluff, listen this sounds kinky as hell but believe me, Tender Sex, Sharing A Bed, sharing tall grass at least, that counts right?

Look, this is just smut. Read the tags and decide if this sin is the sin for you.

Language: Universal Basic Words: 9,980 Chapters: 1/1 Comments: 380 Kudos: 5324 Bookmarks: 261 Hits: 29082

 

accumulation of all you never knew by Charming-but-Irrational  
Defenders RPF  
 **Graphic Depictions of Violence** , **Mature** ,  Lance Serrano/Ryan Kinkade, Lance Serrano/Allura of Altea, Lance Serrano/Allura of Altea/Ryan Kinkade, James Griffin, Keith Kogane, Ryan Kinkade, Takashi Shirogane, Lance Serrano, Allura of Altea, Tsuyoshi ‘Hunk’ Garrett, Pidge Gunderson, Ina Leifsdottir, Veronica Serrano, Nadia Rizavi, Canon Typical Violence, Pining, UST, Friends-to-Lovers, Slow Burn, Sex with Feelings

Vixi duellis nuper idoneus   
Et militavi non sine gloria

He’s a sniper. Used to calculating long odds and hopeless strategies. Ryan Kinkade knows what hopeless looks like, and the idea the Blue Paladins of Voltron would look beyond their epic love story—written in broken bones, lying words of mad princes, and the hearts of dead stars—to see the way he watches them is a wish so hopeless it could be a fairytale.

What he doesn’t know is that fairytales are their stock in trade.

Language: Universal Basic Words: 62,120 Chapters: 6/6 Comments: 95 Kudos: 352 Bookmarks: 161 Hits: 3082

* * *

“Have I mentioned how much I resent it when they fight back,” Lance whines as med-tech stitches closed a nasty wound across the top of his shoulder. “Because I really hate it when they fight back.”

Allura makes a sympathetic noise, squeezing Lance’s hand gently before turning to James with a considering tilt of her head. “I didn’t let you borrow Lance for you to break him,” she says. “I’ll take him back if you continue this, Lieutenant.”

James arches an eyebrow at her. “I didn’t realize I was borrowing him from _you_ , Princess.”

She gives him a sharp-fanged smile. “Who did you think you were borrowing him from? Keith? Please.”

Lance makes a muted sound of protest that they both ignore.

“You know, Princess,” James says thoughtfully. “If you are concerned that I’m treating your sniper poorly, you could always come supervise.”

Allura makes a considering noise low in her throat like she’s thinking about it, like she _might_.

* * *

[video: _The camera wobbles slightly, like the person behind it isn’t used to taking videos, before focusing on the scene. Lt. Commander Takashi Shirogane has Katie ‘Pidge’ Holt hitched in a one-armed cradle on his hip. She’s drooling against his shoulder. His prosthetic is gently guiding Matt Holt down the hallway as Matt complains, slightly incoherent, about drugged coffee and top ten anime betrayals. Shiro makes soft noises of assent every now and again._

_“Sleep is bullshit!” Matt yells. It’s the only even remotely coherent thing he’s said in the several minutes of filming._

_“Unfortunately,” Shiro says with infinite calm, “sleep does continue to be a thing you need to do no matter what your feelings are on it.”_

_“Still bullshit,” Matt mutters mutinously. His hair has mostly escaped his ponytail and frames his face with wild curls—despite the scar and the height and the broad set of his shoulders, he looks remarkably like a toddler about to pitch a temper tantrum._

_Shiro makes a low sound of amused agreement before ushering him inside his room. There’s a low conversation the camera doesn’t capture and Shiro points emphatically at something on the other side of the door. Matt’s faint complaint of “bullshit!” can be heard before Shiro gently closes the door._

_“Just this one then,” Shiro says with a sigh, hiking Pidge a little higher on his hip._

_“Thanks for helping out,” says Keith Kogane from behind the camera. “She just threw things at me when I tried to get her to stop. I don’t know how you do it.”_

_Shiro’s expression takes a distinctly guilty cast and he shifts Pidge again. She grumbles in protest but doesn’t wake._

_“You didn’t actually drug the coffee,” Keith says, there’s clearly laughter in his tone. “Did you?”_

_“They get … difficult,” Shiro says without looking at the camera. His ears are a little pink. “Besides, how else do you think I survived Garrison with Matt?”_

_At this Keith does start to laugh, a soft, rasping thing, and Shiro shoots him a pleased, fond smile. “Hey, you said you wanted to talk?_ ]

nottheblackpaladin(official)  
3,891 likes

the things they don’t tell you about leadership.

998 comments

ResistanceisButyl: @OneHandLuke BETRAYER

OneHandLuke: @ResistanceisButyl you start writing equations that break space-time when you don’t sleep.

PidgeontheGreenPaladin: I’d disown all of you but Shiro is a really comfy pillow.

Not-Invented-Here: they don’t even try to be a little bit subtle. ‘do you want to talk.’ Talk, my _ass_.

adifferenttan: today I learned that if I drink eighteen cups of coffee and stay awake for three days, a Hot Dad will descend from space and carry me like the naughty baby I am and bring me to bed. anyone know if Starbucks has started selling espresso again yet?

youhearnothing: jesus christ, that bicep. i would pay real money to take a ride on that arm

Serious-Callers-Only: Sorry daddy, I’ve been naughty, come and get me and put me to bed

Ethics-Gradient: y’all don’t need jesus, we need to find the specific norse god to sort your nonsense out

therealRizavi: @nottheblackpaladin(official) someone has got to teach you how to use the block & delete function

griffinwings: cute

* * *

(4) News Updates in _War & Politics_

4hrs ago  
Still No Word on Memorial Plans as Anniversary Date Approaches

6hrs ago  
Pro-Isolationists Reject Meeting with Garrison Leadership

14hrs ago  
Attempted Attack on Water Filtration System Foiled by UEMS Counter-Terrorism Taskforce

1 Day ago  
Pro-Isolationists Clash with Galra Refugees and Law Enforcement

* * *

[video: _Lance Serrano bounces up to Allura of Altea, all smiles and excited hand gestures. She cocks her head to the side as she listens, after a while she half turns and gestures to someone off camera—a little ‘come here’ gesture and James Griffin obligingly steps into the frame. He runs a hand through his hair, making it stand up in every which direction, and gives her a tired half smile._

_“I hope he wasn’t too much trouble, Lieutenant,” she says to James, there’s something in the cast of her expression that suggests this is a familiar conversation. Something just slightly mischievous in the way she looks up at him, all sweet solicitousness._

_Lance grins. “Maybe he_ wants _me to be troub—“_

_Allura cuts him off with a hand over his mouth, “Grown-ups are talking,” she tells him gently. “Hush.”_

_Lance mumbles something behind her hand that the camera doesn’t catch and falls silent._

_“No, Princess, he was no trouble,” James says. He looks amused, wryly affectionate. “He saved the day, in fact.”_

_“Did you save the day?” Allura asks Lance. He nods behind her hand. “Well, that’s nice.”_ ]

RyanKinkadeOfficial:  
32,093 likes

I think this is what they mean when they say someone is ‘whipped’. @griffinwings @deadshotLance

3,801 comments

griffinwings: @RyanKinkadeOfficial just what are you implying here

RyanKinkadeOfficial: @griffinwings boy

deadshotLance: @griffinwings at a certain point you just embrace it

someone-elses-problem: now I’m really starting to think you guys are just messing with us

PidgeontheGreenPaladin: @griffinwings eventually you have to give them back you know

griffinwings: @PidgeontheGreenPaladin nope.

vixenheart: ALL OF YOU KISS

* * *

A heavy knock against his office door has James looking up with a frown. He pulls earphones from his ears and waits. The knock comes again. If it was possible for a knock to sound annoyed, this one would. Straightening his uniform, James tries to look like he’s actually seen his bed at some point in the last thirty-six hours. (He almost certainly fails.) He bites the inside of his mouth to keep from groaning as he stands up, his ribs making their displeasure with the movement known. 

He opens the door to Kogane’s irritated face and promptly closes it. 

“Griffin,” Kogane says from the other side of the door like he’s holding onto the edge of his temper through sheer willpower. “Open the damned door.”

James sits back down at his desk and pops his earphones back in.

“ _Griffin_ ,” Kogane says, his voice climbing down into a rasping growl, “you have to the count of ten to open the damned door.”

James turns his music up and opens his latest debriefing report. There’s an art to highlighting a problem without actually stating it, but he’s not sure he’s mastered it yet. Not for the first time in the past nine months he reflects that he is not built for cloak and dagger bullshit, but he’s got his damned orders.

There’s a soft stream of profanity before Kogane starts counting—careful and measured as if he’s clawing back his temper with each number. “Fine,” he says when he hits ten. “I don’t know why I expected you to behave like an adult about this. But fine.”

James isn’t too proud to say that the noise he lets out when Kogane and his damned _cosmic wolf_ (what the fuck, he’d like to ask the universe, is up with giving Kogane a damned teleporting canine on top of everything else—what the fuck) materialize on the top of his desk is a high-pitched noise not unlike the shriek of an indignant toddler.

Kogane glares down at him from where he kneels on top of James’ desk, one hand buried in his wolf’s fur. James counts to ten inside his head before collecting himself from the floor and carefully setting his chair to rights. Kogane doesn’t move an inch so James sits back down and, very carefully, collects his tablet from under Kogane’s wolf’s furry butt. The wolf sniffs him for a moment and then licks him right up the side of his face.

He puts his tablet down and looks at the wolf. “That was uncalled for,” he tells it seriously. “I’m trying to work.”

“Are you going to just pretend that I’m not here,” Kogane asks. His face is doing a complicated dance between incredulous, amused, and furious. “I’m standing on your desk.”

“Kneeling on it, actually,” James corrects as he tries to fish his earphones out from under Keith’s wolf. It’s a surprisingly fluffy creature, managing to obscure the part of his desk not taken up with an irate Black Paladin with its long blue-and-black fur. “But, as always, your GOFO is lacking. Does this thing shed?”

The wolf makes a low grumbling sound that’s not quite a growl as James nudges him to the side. “You could always teleport away,” he tells it calmly, as if it didn’t have an impressive set of teeth inches from his face. “That would get me to stop poking at you to get your furry ass off my earphones.”

Kogane huffs out a frustrated noise. “Okay,” Kogane says as James gives up trying to get his earphones and goes back to his tablet. “This is … I don’t know why I was expecting anything different from you.”

“I don’t know why you were expecting anything of me at all,” James replies without looking up. He strikes out a sentence with a frown. “But you do persist.”

“Are you _trying_ to get me to deck you again?” Kogane demands.

“That does seem to be your default problem-solving methodology,” James comments as he starts typing. It’s a little tricky to do, balancing the tablet on his knee, but he manages to make it work.

There’s several minutes of silence only punctuated by the wolf’s brief, bored whine and James’ tapping. 

“You’re not even going to ask what I’m doing here,” Kogane says eventually. He sounds so completely lost that James looks up, bemused. Kogane stares down at him, still kneeling on his desk. His wolf has curled up in a fluffy little ball, tail curled over its nose. It is ridiculously cute.

James goes back to his report. 

“No,” James says. “I imagine you’ll either shout it at me at some point in an emotional fit or you’ll see yourself out. Regardless, _some_ of us try to get our reports in on time and get our missions properly authorized before traipsing about like a gaggle of amateurs with delusions of grandeur.”

Kogane makes a noise like a chicken being strangled and for the second time of the evening James finds himself flat on his back in his office. This time pinned there by roughly one hundred and eighty pounds of infuriated paladin. He blinks up into Kogane’s unfairly pretty eyes. “ _Some_ of us,” Kogane hisses, doing a really horrible impression of James, in James’ opinion, “are trying to save the damned universe, not play petty bureaucratic games.”

Ah. James had wondered when this particular conversation would roll around. He favors Kogane with a sweet smile that makes the paladin visibly grind his teeth.

“If you have a problem with current duty assignments,” he says gently, “there is a process to file complaints. I would be delighted to show you.”

Kogane doesn’t quite growl at him, but it’s a near thing. “What the fuck were you thinking,” he snarls, low and dangerous—it’s a good tone. James is very impressed. “Burying that transfer so deep there’s no fucking way _anyone_ would be able to find it?”

James arches an eyebrow and nudges at Kogane’s hip. Kogane responds by digging his knee into James’ side—the one with the broken ribs, making stars burst behind James’ eyes for a moment. “Most of us read the paperwork before we sign it, Kogane,” he says, breathless with pain. “It’s called doing our due diligence as officers.”

“Most of us,” Kogane hisses back, leaning into James’ space until his breath feathered across James’ lips, “don’t expect the people on our damned side to hide daggers in the paperwork.”

James opens up his mouth to make some pithy and cutting retort, he swears, when a hiccupping moan of pain comes out instead. 

Kogane freezes. “Are you _seriously_ ,” he starts and then trails off as a blush works its way across his cheeks.

“Those ribs,” James gasps out, “are broken. You jackass.”

He’s gratified when Kogane scrambles off him, suddenly desperate to be as far away from him as possible. He lets himself curl up for a moment, just a second, as he breathes through the pain. It’s a familiar sort of stabbing ache that molds itself along his nerves and sparks with every motion. There’s a trick to willing it away, but he can’t find it with Kogane staring at him with an openly horrified expression. 

“When did you—” Kogane starts, his face softening into sympathetic lines.

“Stop reading fanfiction about yourself, hotshot,” James interrupts before Kogane can finish that sentence. If there is one thing he will not tolerate it’s having Kogane look all soft and pitying at _him_. He’ll cut those pretty violet eyes out first. “It’s messing with your sense of reality.”

Kogane’s mouth closes so fast James can hear the click of his teeth. He hisses out a breath so hard it whistles between his teeth. “I should just let you have Lance,” he grinds out, as if it costs him in blood to not yell the words. “The two of you fit together so well.”

James gives him a sweet smile and drags himself to standing so he can stare down at Kogane. “Well,” he says with faux-thoughtfulness, as if the idea required any sort of consideration, “if you don’t want the best sniper the Garrison has ever produced, I will be _delighted_ to take him off your hands.”

Kogane glares up at him, so angry James can see the way it shorts out his ability to think. He lets his smile go sharp and vicious. “And if you don’t want the princess who is literally made out of magic,” he leans down right into Kogane’s space until they are mere inches apart and he can see the little flecks of actual purple in Kogane’s irises and whispers kitten-fur soft, “I’ll take her, too.”

Something sparks in Kogane’s gaze—James can almost hear the _whump_ of a match hitting propane—but he’s still not expecting it when Kogane cocks his head to the side, dark hair spilling across his face, shadowing his eyes, and says: “Maybe this can be a learning experience for you, _Jamie_ ,” Kogane’s eyes are cold as deep glacier ice, “you can’t get everything you want, just because you want it. But maybe if you ask nice, mommy and daddy will buy you something to make up for it.”

James stares down at him as Kogane smiles up at him, so smug and so pleased to land a hit, and all James can hear is a high, clear ringing in his head like the Garrison alarms when Sendak first attacked. 

Can only hear the ringing alarm that had taken _everything_. 

James blinks, stares down at Kogane and blinks again as Kogane’s expression falters, flickers for just a moment, and then says softly, because his throat suddenly refuses to function properly: “Get out.”

“What the fuck,” Kogane snaps, bouncing to his feet like his knees were made of springs. “We aren’t done here.”

“Get,” James repeats quietly. “Out.”

Kogane makes a grab for him and James lets him, stares at Kogane’s hand and then his face when he snarls, “you can’t just throw me out on some sudden bitch fit.”

“I’m leaving,” James says. Even in his own ears, his voice sounds strange: flat and nearly robotic. Kogane tightens his grip like he expects a fight. James stares at him and has no idea what expression his face is making. “If you don’t let me go,” he says slowly, careful around the words like he’s forgotten exactly how to pronounce them, “I will kill you.”

Kogane recoils as if James has suddenly turned radioactive. James blinks again before he turns and walks out the door. Kogane says nothing, just stands in his office with a baffled expression and a wolf that whines softly.

* * *


	5. Hymn for the Dead

sequencefairy reblogged from roundab00t

roundab00t posted:

[video: _Keith Kogane stands on a mat in the middle of what looks to be the Garrison gyms. He’s flanked by his mother, Krolia, and a tall Galra with a jagged scar down his face and a white braid wrapped around his throat. A line of Blade recruits stands before them, all of them at parade rest. The entire scene thrums with repressed energy. As a unit Krolia and Kolivan stop off the mat and Keith cracks knuckles of both hands before dropping into a low crouch before making a little ‘come on’ gesture with one hand._

_Two recruits look at each other before charging him as the opening bars of “Mama Said Knock You Out” start to play over the video._ ]

:eyes: Look what I found on Nadia’s feed.

*

hchano:  
oh my fucking god. Is she trying to kill us

*

perfectlyrose:  
this video is a personal attack. i have been attacked.

*

iblamemymother:

okay but did you see that black widow thigh choke bullshit? Poor little blade had no idea what to do that close to nirvana

*

iblameyourmother:

that slow squat and the 'ass drop' line were so well timed and so fucking thirsty. We see you. And honestly? Me too, Rizavi, me too

*

Zekxtan:

@iblameyourmother, @iblamemymother the combination of the post & your usernames is A+ well done.

*

iblamemymother:

We know. 

*

sequencefairy:

… anyone else feel like she Knows and is now fucking with us?

*

roundab00t:

_y e s_

102,910 notes  
Tagged: #Keith Kogane, #the Blades, #Baby Blades, #Nadia can kill me any day she likes, #if she’s keeping us this well fed,

* * *

[Image: _James Griffin sits on the wing of an MFE-Ares staring off into the distance. His face is the perfect blankness of portraits and mannequins, as if no emotions lived behind the windows of his eyes. Ina Leifsdottir kneels behind him with her arms wrapped around his shoulders and her face buried in his hair. The setting sun paints them in pinks and soft yellows._ ]

RyanKinkadeOfficial  
32,091 likes

friends make bad days easier #badmemories #fuckthisanniversary #nofilter  
3,092 replies

therealRizavi: and I thought the first time around was bad.

RyanKinkadeOfficial: @therealRizavi the first time around _was_ bad.

therealRizavi: @RyanKinkadeOfficial I know. I don’t know why I wrote that.

AdventureClubRemix: thank you for your service

deadshotLance: @therealRizavi @RyanKinkadeOfficial so, I have, like, two bottles for rum ready to go.

InaGegnHernaðurinu: @deadshotLance get more

deadshotLance: @InaGegnHernaðurinu yes ma’am.

* * *

[image: _LCDR Takashi Shirogane stands in front of the Garrison’s memorial wall with Matt Holt at his side. Shiro has a small, sardonic smile twisting his lips—an unusual expression for the LCDR. Matt looks unusually somber, bordering on worried. The Wall dwarfs them, curling around them like a slumbering beast housing all of Garrison’s mighty dead, the shadows of the memorial lights casting strange shadows over their faces._ ]

OneHandLuke  
1,009,001 likes

I was told reunions were awkward, but this takes the cake. #classreunion  
120,232 replies

Fate-Amenable-To-Change: thank you for your service

nottheblackpaladin(official): @ResistanceisButyl @OneHandLuke, meet you at the cabin

PidgeontheGreenPaladin: @nottheblackpaladin(official) that’s a brave term for that collection of boards and sawdust, but acknowledged. Matt’ll get him there.

LivewareProblem: Do you guys want me to bring something? I can pack lunches.

nottheblackpaladin(official): @LivewareProblem thanks, we’ve got this

LivewareProblem: @nottheblackpaladin(official) I’m packing lunches.

* * *

“And this is common?” Allura asks as she paces along a wall with line art, sketches, and vivid designs done in bold primary colours. “I had thought it was something between Lance and Ryan,” she makes a little hand gesture as if to encompass the entirety of pair of snipers as they stand next to each other, Lance leaning against Ryan’s shoulder—he flashes Allura a bright smile in return, “something to indicate deep bonds and connection.”

Ina makes a thoughtful sound in the back of her throat, like she’s been presented with the complicated theorem to explain. “Yes, they are also that,” she agrees as she watches Allura pace, “no, not that style,” she interjects as Allura leans in to peer at a piece of art, “it’s not right for you.”

Allura arches an eyebrow and Ina just shrugs. She doesn’t know how to explain that the heavy, nautical themed style of traditional sailor tattoos is wrong for their Princess, she just does. Allura considers her for a moment longer and then moves farther down the wall, silently accepting Ina’s judgement without question. It warms something behind Ina’s ribs, the way Allura just accepts her decisions.

“But this skin-art,” Allura starts.

“Tattoos,” James corrects, because he’s pedantic when he’s nervous and something about Allura looking at the designs like she wants one, like she’s _thinking_ about it, makes him nervous. 

“I like ‘skin-art’ as a term,” Ina tells James. Because she does. Because it makes Allura smile at her, bright white teeth flashing in her dark face, a little like Nadia’s wicked grin. Because this is a thing she understands when everything else seems out sorts and disjointed. “It’s descriptive.”

James makes a face at her but says nothing.

Allura waits until Ina turns back to her, which Ina likes. She likes how Allura waits for her to speak, to find the right words when sometimes it feels like none of the words inside her head are the _right _words. Or the come out of her mouth all twisted together and wrong. Or sometimes won’t come out at all. Allura always seems to content to wait and Ina likes it.__

Allura waits until Ina walks beside her, so close that their shoulders brush together a little. Ina knows this artwork, has seen it curl up James’ ribs, stamped across Ryan and Lance’s arms, riding low across Nadia’s hipbones. None of it dances across Ina’s skin—she’s thought about it, sat and listened to the buzz of the needle as it moved across James’ pale, pale skin until it was painted in black and blood—but not now, not yet.

“Memorial tattoos,” Allura says, like a reminder, like an invitation, and Ina likes it.

Ina reaches out and taps one design—empty boots with a rifle in them and a helmet—and then another—simple dog-tags like the ones under James’ heart—and watches with a little thrill at how Allura’s eyes track her hands like she’s rapt. “These are common designs,” Ina tells her, watching as the Princess turns to look at her seriously, like this is a mission briefing and it occurs to Ina that Allura is not walking out of this shop with untouched skin. “Boots and rifles for marines, combat troops, people lost in direct combat. Dog tags are a little more common at the Garrison,” Allura nods thoughtfully and it warms something in Ina, makes her feel like a flower in the sun, “they tend to be for people killed in air missions. Like James’ tattoos.”

Allura blinks and turns to James, who makes a face at Ina that she can’t decipher. She cocks her head at him. It’s not as if his tattoos are secret.

“You have skin-art?” Allura asks.

“Tattoos,” James corrects, pedantic and petulant, “and yes.”

“May I see them?” their Princess asks, and there’s something in their tones, in the undercurrent of the conversation, that Ina doesn’t quite understand. Lance laughs, a soft and crowing thing, and winks at her when Ina turns to look at him. 

James frowns at all of them and then sighs as he heaves himself away from the tattoo artist’s counter, the artist watches with big eyes and a slightly stunned expression, and walks over to them. He looks down at Allura, even though he’s not that much taller, and she smiles at him, small and secretive. 

“James,” Ina says, just his name, because she doesn’t know how to say what she wants to say. That he’s being strange and odd and dramatic and she doesn’t understand. He looks at her for a moment and then sighs.

“It’s like Ina said,” James says as he pulls at his t-shirt, his own dog-tags clinking lightly as he yanks his shirt up, “just a basic memorial tattoo, nothing that special.”

“Thanks, man,” the tattoo artist says wryly, “tell them how you really feel.”

Lance laughs again as James grimaces in chagrin and their artist laughs as well, waving a hand to show he’s not upset. Ina’s glad. It’d be bad if they upset their artist. He’s designed and then meticulously etched all of the art curling over ribs, hips, down infinitely fragile spines. When Ina finally decides on her art, she wants him to do it. It’s tradition now, she thinks, and she wants to follow it. As Allura watches the exchange with perceptive eyes and thoughtful silence, Ina thinks she might want to follow that tradition as well. 

Ina punches James in the side, not as hard as she can but enough to make him grunt. “Be nice,” she warns him, “be good.”

James grumbles something incoherent and pulls his t-shirt off rather than just hold it up, arching for their Princess’ inspection. 

Ina likes how Allura doesn’t say anything at first. No quips or sly comments. Just a slow head tilt as she walks a circle around James, her fingers tracing over his ribs, following the path of the ink. Allura makes a low sound in the back of her throat, contemplative, when her fingers hit the waist of James' pants where they ride low on his hip bones and Ina thinks his little shiver has nothing to do with the cold. 

“One tag per?” Allura asks, voice soft like secrets. Not gentle—James wouldn’t tolerate gentle, Ina thinks—but careful. As if she were handling something potentially explosive.

Their Princess is observant, and Ina likes it.

“Yes,” James confirms. He covers her fingers over the top tag and presses them down, right under his heart and they stare at each other. “Names and dates.”

“I don’t think I have enough skin,” Allura says lightly in a way that Ina has learned isn’t light at all, “for that.”

Jamie doesn’t move his fingers from hers, doesn’t look away, just says: “no, probably not.”

* * *

[Thumbnail: _Matt Holt leans against a kitchen counter, expression smug as he holds out a tart for Paladin Hunk Garrett to take. Hunk’s expression is skeptical, but not nearly as skeptical as Sal’s, who holds the Paladin by both shoulders like a shield. Matt’s body language is all long lines and laughing challenge, like he knows the bind he’s put the two chefs into and finds it hilarious._ ]

##### Verpit Sal and Paladin Hunk’s Kitchen Adventures ft. Matt Holt (baking is edible chemistry)!

4,930,234 views

9,133 comments:

**neŏcchi – 1 day ago**  
Did he just describe how to cook a fruit tart like it was the chemical equation for poison?  
3.4k likes  
Hide replies ^

**Ethics-Gradient – 1 day ago**  
Well. He is a scientist.  
312 likes

**limivorous – 23 hours ago**  
It’s still a little worrying that Hunk says ‘let’s make fruit tarts!’ and Holt’s mind goes to poison.  
253 likes

**lovelysky – 1 day ago**  
i saw someones screengrabs of Matt lounging all around Hunks god damn kitchen like a model and audibly whispered 'oh my god'. my sig fig looked over my shoulder, raised her brows, and just said, 'oh so thats who we're thirsty for today, i see.' ive never felt more called out in my life  
5.2k likes  
Hide replies ^

**pineconesandscones – 22 hours ago**  
Honestly. Same.  
241 likes

**swagitician -- 13 hours ago**  
three hundred bucks that's the face matt makes when he's got someone kneeling between his thighs  
2.9k likes  
Hide replies ^

**resist(A)nce – 13 hours ago**  
Yeah? And how much to _be_ the one between his thighs?  
2.1 likes  
Hide replies ^

* * *

##### Two Months to Anniversary: No Plans Set, Says Garrison

As the anniversary of Sendak’s initial invasion of Earth approaches, official UEMS sources remain silent on their memorial plans. After the liberation of the planet from Galra forces by Garrison forces and the Voltron Paladins, people around the globe look to the Garrison for guidance on how they should commemorate this day. UEMS officials have provided no response to calls for an official memorial service.

[image: _The Garrison’s memorial wall stands backlit by floor lights, the night sky in the windows behind it is a deep and endless void. The camera has focused on a string of plaques all with the same last name._ ]

Pro-Isolationist groups say UEMS silence underscores their co-option by pro-alien factions. 

_click for more_

4,902 comments 

Earth-Borne @humanityalways  
[ _this comment has been removed by the moderation team_ ]

^Civil-Discourse @freestateproject  
I wonder if this knee-jerk censorship of any criticism of the UEMS or the presence of alien refugees on earth really serves humanity. I worry about this aggressive violation of our rights.

^^Hector @kissthisthen  
Here’s a wonder “will you shut the fuck up?”

* * *

“You’re Paladin Kogane.”

It’s not a question, but a statement and one of intense skepticism. Keith freezes for a moment, memory and hindbrain working together to pull forward every bad association he’s ever had with that particular dismissive, disdainful tone. When he turns around there’s a man watching him wearing admiral’s stars and a disapproving expression.

“I am,” he replies, fighting hard to keep the ‘what the fuck of it,’ out of his tone. 

The man narrows his eyes at the obvious lack of respect. “And it seems you continue to be as confused about chain of command as everyone at this instillation,” the admiral says softly. “Somehow I fail to be surprised.”

Keith can’t help the way his eyes narrow, just a little. “The Paladins of Voltron are allied with the United Earth Military Services,” he replies in the same soft tone. “But we are not under your command. We aren’t under _anyone’s_ command.”

“It seems to be a reoccurring theme for your generation of pilots,” the admiral says. “This refusal to accept proper military order.” He sighs as if suddenly exhausted. “A mistake of Sanda’s, I suppose, she always allowed Iverson and Holt entirely too much leeway and it’s infected the lot of you.”

Keith can feel his eye twitch at that, when Matt claps a hand to his shoulder and grins with entirely too many teeth to be reassuring. “Admiral Udina!” He chirps, somehow both cheerful and threatening. “Joint Chiefs’ meeting isn’t for another two weeks. Your presence is … unexpected.”

“Holt,” Admiral Udina says, tone as flat as frozen prairies and twice as cold. “My travel schedule is not for your review.”

“Clearly!” Matt agrees in that same cheerfully threatening tone. “However, all personnel who are not permanently assigned to the Garrison are required to announce their presence with internal security and the MPs, and I know you wouldn’t want to disrupt regular operations.”

Admiral Udina stalks up to Matt, eyes narrowed into thoughtful slits. “You do think you are clever, don’t you?” He asks. “Subverting chain of command is nothing but a game to you.”

Matt tilts his head to the side and stares down at the Admiral with an unholy gleam in his eyes. “I know I’m clever,” he replies, “got a Ph.D in it and everything. However, I can’t subvert a chain of command that I’m technically not in, being a member of the Voltron Coalition and all. Leadership, in fact!”

“I’m amazed that this is even still an UEMS instillation given the number of individuals who are ‘technically not part of UEMS command’ that staff it,” Udina remarks with a falsely causal tone. 

“Well,” Matt says thoughtfully, “there was this little invasion and occupation that decimated the UEMS and all of its leadership, except for you and your friends who managed to both not be at the Garrison and not be dead. You might have heard about it in your secured bunker. Just maybe.”

Keith coughs, trying unsuccessfully to mask the disbelieving laugh that bubbles out of him. Udina looks at both of them with a sour expression before stalking past them.

“Remember to check-in with the MPs!” Matt calls after him. “They get really upset about unauthorized personnel wandering about the place.”

“I’m an admiral!”

Keith bites his lips shut and presses a hand against them for good measure to keep from laughing as the man stalks off. Matt radiates gleeful malice beside him.

“Well,” Matt says, grinning like a self-satisfied cat, smug and faintly vicious. “That was fun.”

“Who was he?” Keith asks. “Is this going to be a problem?”

Matt makes a disgusted noise low in his throat. “Admiral Donnal Udina. One of the remaining bits of UEMS command from before Sendak’s invasion. Popped up with his little buddies from some secured bunker right after you guys put on your little low-atmosphere light show. Been trying to take over everything ever since.”

Keith blinks. “I’ve never heard of him.”

“Normally Vero and James keep them occupied with clever paperwork that I don’t pretend to understand.” Matt shrugs. “Dad hates him.”

“So, this is going to be a problem,” Keith concludes.

“Nah,” Matt says. “It’ll annoy Jamie, but that’s not hard to do these days.” He get a contemplative expression. “Though we should play least in sight for a little while.” 

Keith sighs, suddenly reminded of Matt at the Garrison—smarter than everyone around him and bored because of it. Matt jostles him with an elbow in the side.

“Don’t sigh like that,” he chides. “You sound like an old man. Besides, I’ve got something cool to show you.”

“Uh-huh.”

“This distrust you have is hurtful. I want you to know that.”

* * *

[image: _Keith Kogane holds Matt Holt’s hand—Matt’s forearm clearly identifiable from the sharp black line work etched into his skin that melds together obscure equations and dying flowers—Keith’s forearm cording with the tension of pulling him up the shattered face of a building. Keith’s turned away from Matt, the long lines of his back coated in dirt and grime, stuck to him with sweat. His hair, pulled back into a messy ponytail, is streaked white cracked marble dust._

_It looks like Keith is leading Matt through the ruins of one of Earth’s forgotten cities, abandoned after Sendak’s initial invasion and never rebuilt. The building they’re climbing is a shattered shell, overgrown with climbing ivy and moss._ ]

ResistanceisButyl  
621,993 likes

This is the most romantic thing that has ever happened to me #abandonedplaces #urbanex #notfilter #girlfriendpicture #heissocute  
23,245 replies

nottheblackpaladin(official): I don’t know why I trust you

ResistanceisButyl: @nottheblackpaladin(official) I am very trustworthy person!

LivewareProblem: I have questions. Most of them revolving around ‘where is your safety harness’?

Tactical-Grace: so like did anyone elses dick immediately get hard when they saw boy over here with his hair up or was that just me? that was just me? okay cool

nottheblackpaladin(official): @LivewareProblem in black? we don’t need it for little climbs like this

LivewareProblem: buddy, you and I have a very different definition of ‘little climb’ and we’re gonna talk about that.

OneHandLuke: #nottheblackpaladin(official) years of interstellar travel, becoming a ‘space ninja’, an intergalactic war and you still fall for the same trick.

sequencefairy: kogane could take my hand and lead me to hell and i would trip over my fucking feet to follow him there

ResistanceisButyl: @OneHandLuke it’s reassuring in its simple innocence, really

nottheblackpaladin(official): @ResistanceisButyl @OneHandLuke, why am I friends with either of you

Unacceptable-Behavior: im right so im saying it. someone who never puts their hair up, tying their hair back like that? somebodys dick got sucked in an old abandoned building. thats just the rules

* * *

UndesirableAlien reblogged from Zekxtan

Stranger-Here-Myself 

Someone have an explanation why the Matt Holt/Keith Kogane tag just exploded overnight? Not that I’m complaining, because yay content!, but I feel like I’m missing something.

*

Charming-But-Delusional:

Check ResistanceisButyl’s feed. You’ll thank yourself.

*

Zekxtan:

None of y’all have even the faintest concept of sarcasm, do you?

*

UndesirableAlien:

Hush. Life is hard in rarepair hell.

823 notes  
Tagged: #Matt Holt, #Keith Kogane, #Katt, #rarepair hell is hard, #its hard, #and no one understands

* * *

Pidge freezes on the threshold to silent amphitheater that houses the Garrison’s memorial wall. She debates slinking back into the shadows and pretending she doesn’t see the figure sitting sprawled in front of the wall. Something about the fragile line of his profile, the faint hint of sorrow to the set of his jaw, has her stepping forward. 

James doesn’t say anything when she drops down beside him—not even a flicker to his expression.

She debates saying something, but she doesn’t have any words that could ease the hurt she can read across the line of his shoulders as easily as she can read a line a code. There are no words, she thinks, that could ease that pain in the face of a line of plaques all with the same name that extend from the top of the wall almost to the bottom. Pidge stares at those pictures—all of them with James’ stubborn chin and dark eyes—and thinks about watching a newscast over her mother’s shoulder. Thinks about how the world went cold and dark as she stood on that stairwell.

She pulls her laptop onto her knees and opens a file. Something in James’ posture eases as she begins to type. 

The wall glows softly in the darkness, memorial lights that never dim, and she uses it to check her work against a set of files borrowed from her father’s office. The sound of her typing echoes strangely around them, like the distant echoes of a forgotten song. They sit together for so long that her back complains at the hunched posture and her eyes start to burn with exhaustion, but she’s not moving from this position, from this place until he does.

James reaches over and gently closes her laptop. Pidge blinks up at him, surprised at this sudden interaction after hours of silence. He looks at her like she’s something unexpected, like a puzzle to be solved, and then the corner of his mouth kicks up. “Thanks,” he says, “how did you know?”

“That you were here? I didn’t,” she says, and he gives her a flat look until she squirms. “After Kerberos,” she says after a while, “I didn’t want anyone to talk to me, but I didn’t want to be alone either.”

James looks at the wall again for a moment and then nods. When he rolls to his feet, all combat grace and long limbs, he reaches back for her without a second thought. She takes his hand and lets him pull her to her feet. He squeezes her hand, just once, before stepping away.

“Thanks,” he says again.

* * *

Quiz: Which Defender Are You?

##### You Got: Lieutenant James Griffin

[Image: _Lt. James Griffin stands in front of his MFE-Ares with his arms crossed and chin tilted in a clear challenge as he stares at the camera. There’s a suggestion of a smirk in his expression, but his eyes are very serious. His flight suit is immaculate, boots polished to a high gleam, and not a hair is out of place. He looks like every ideal of a fighter pilot rolled into one person and given life_ ]

You’re a stickler for rules, structure and organization, and you look down on anyone who breaks them. You’re earnest, hard-working, and sometimes blunt to the point of harshness. You’re a natural leader who would do anything for your team. 

Did you know you can sign up for a GalaxyFeed Community account and make your own GalaxyFeed posts? Get started here!

* * *

(5) News Updates in _War & Politics_

 

6hrs ago  
Shanghai Stock Market Volatile After New Energy Source Theorized 

10hrs ago  
Pro-Isolationist Groups Warn ‘Day Of Reckoning’ Approaching

13hrs ago  
Garrison Denies Plans For Memorial Service As Anniversary Approaches

1 Day ago  
Joint-Chiefs’ Compound, ‘The Terminus’, Near Completion

2 Days Ago  
Physicists Theorize Cold Fusion Possible Via Altean Alchemy

* * *

Zekxtan reblogged from roundab00t:

uwutronn posted:

[image: _A tiny blur of green, black, and white streaks along the Green Lion’s side. The rest of the shot is in focus, the background crisp and clear, as if the motion blur had been edited into the shot._ ]

@Zekxtan FKN PROOF

*

cupid’soo:

is that Pidge?

*

roundab00t:

yes. Matt just posted with #cryptidKatie and now they are yelling at each other in the comments and it’s _h i l a r i o us_

*

sequencefairy:

do you have alerts set up on all their accounts or something?

*

uwutronn:

we love our fandom mom, don’t judge

*

roundab00t:

vodka aunt

*

uwutronn:

wine mom

*

roundab00t:

close enough

*

Zekxtan:

This proves nothing

 

10,823 notes  
Tagged: #i believe in the you who doesn’t believe, #Defenders of Earth, #Green Paladin, #chrono is vodka mom

* * *

Ina runs her thumb over Allura’s knuckles when their Princess tightens her grip around Ina’s hand, a slow breath hissing through her clenched teeth. She considers Allura’s strained expression, the way her brow furrows just a little—a tiny line that Ina wants to smooth a way—and the way she closes her eyes very deliberately as she breathes. Little things that speaks to the exercise of control getting a tattoo (‘skin-art’, Ina will love forever this term) is for Allura. She adds this to her catalog of expressions that she keeps for all of her people. 

This is Allura’s expression when she is in pain and controlling it. Ina will remember.

She runs her thumbs over Allura’s knuckles, a slow sweep of skin across skin, and she admires for a moment the paleness of her fingers against Allura’s dark skin. She likes the contrast and tells Allura so.

Allura opens her eyes to look down at where their fingers are tangled together, dark and light, like bone and rich dirt, and smiles her pretty smile. “We do make a pretty picture,” she says, her voice just slightly strained. She relaxes her fingers just a little around Ina’s hand, spreading them out so their hands are on display. “It’s a pretty contrast.”

“I read a paper once,” Ina tells her and then pauses, unsure if she should continue. Not all people like it when she tells them the details of what she’s read, but Allura makes a soft noise, a little chirp of interest, so she continues. “That suggested that Newton’s Third Law of Motion has symmetry breaking effects when applied to physics, at least for systems out of equilibrium due to the additional entropic gradient term present in the particle’s momentum.”

Allura smiles at her, biting her bottom lip for a moment as the artist’s needle moves over the sensitive skin across her ribs, and then laughs. “We remind you of physics?”

Ina nods. Because they do, dark to light, clever social manipulation to ruthless mathematical precision, they are opposite and equal reactions bracketing her James. They are a push-and-pull that sets his universe in balance. Allura tangles their fingers together as she tries to explain this, equations and math and fragments of poetry turning into confused mess in her mouth. But Allura waits for her, patient as the sweep of stars, and says nothing until she finishes her messy explanation.

“You have a poetic turn of mind,” Allura says.

“I don’t think that’s right,” Ina says doubtfully, but colloquialisms slide from her mind like sand from an hourglass so she’s not sure, “I don’t think that’s the phrase.”

“No?” Allura asks, says, asks, the social convention tangling together in the way her tone is gently teasing and her eyebrow lifting like she doesn’t want an answer at all. “I think my translation is correct.”

There is something in Ina that wants to protest this, because she is not poetic. She’s been told this by more than one person, teacher, authority. She is cold and mathematical and _precise_ but she is not poetic. “I told you the mathematical equations,” she says instead of all the questions that smash together inside her mind and refuse to come out of her mouth, “not poetry.”

Allura laughs, breathy from pain and light in a way that says her feelings are anything but light. Her eyes are closed against the pain again. The artist wipes away the blood, hands gentle against Allura’s dark skin and Ina is glad for that. There’s a long moment where Allura breathes slow and steady, control against the pain, and then she opens her beautiful ice blue eyes. Ina thinks she might love these cold, controlled eyes.

“What is math,” Allura asks, voice catching, fragmenting, around the pain as the artist’s needle buzzes against her perfect skin, “but poetry with different notation?”

Ina makes a face, makes a disgusted sound, because she’s heard this trite saying before and it feels true-but-not in ways that make her skin itch. “I am almost entirely certain,” she tells Allura, “that it doesn’t work like that.”

Allura makes a little noise, so faint Ina isn’t sure if it’s pain or response and tightens her hand around Ina’s. The tattoo artist’s needle is very loud. Ina watches as deep red blood follows the dark lines its draws like a magnetic effect. She wants to wipe it away. She wants to draw that deep red to her lips and see what it tastes like. But that’s not a civilized thought, she’s learned, so Ina puts it away.

“Do we really care how things are supposed to work?” Allura asks without opening her eyes. “Do we?”

Ina doesn’t know how to answer that question. She has a history behind her, long and painfully learned, that says yes, yes, she does care. But looking into Allura’s blue-black eyes, watching the blood bead along her silky skin, Ina wonders if that’s really true. 

“I think,” Ina says carefully—hedging, she realizes, like she’s playing poker with Veronica—she blows out a slow breath, “I think we are supposed to care.”

“But we don’t,” Allura says.

Ina looks at where their hands are tangled together, listens to Allura’s slow and controlled breathing, and sighs in time with her heartbeat. “No,” she says softly, “we don’t.”

* * *

Quiz: Which Defender Are You?

##### You Got: Black Paladin Keith Kogane

[image: _Keith Kogane sits on the paw of the Black Lion, helmet held dangling between his knees with loose fingers as he watches something out of the frame with a soft, bemused expression. His hair is tousled like he’s been raking his fingers through it. There’s an infinitely still quality to his posture._ ]

You’re a force of nature with little patience for red tape or small talk. While you might not be the best at catching social cues, your instincts—particularly when fighting or flying—have never led you wrong. Once you commit to something you’ll see it through or die trying. 

Did you know you can sign up for a GalaxyFeed Community account and make your own GalaxyFeed posts? Get started here!

* * *

breeeliss reblogged from halcyon-quintants

bicon-voltron:

 

[image: _Allura of Altea stares down at the camera, eyes dark and cool, with one hand holding her hair piled on top of her hair where it tumbles from her grasp, curling around her shoulders, the other hand holds her left breast up and out of the way of a tattoo that starts under her heart and crawls down her side to the top of her hip. Her expression is faintly challenging and distant. The tattoo covers her dusky skin in soft pinks and pale reds, painting her ribs with flowers that look like stylized stargazer lilies. The glowing lines of her markings like vines supporting the gentle arch of the lilies._ ]

I am so useless and so gay

*

frankexchangeofviews:

you do know what that means, right? those are juniberry flowers, that’s a memorial tattoo, like _fuck man_

*

vixenheart:

where did you find it?! It’s not on Lance’s feed or any of the MFE pilots

*

bicon-voltron:

she has an account! PrincessofStolenScreenNames

*

chrono:

_she has a fkndjx acCOUNT?!?!_

*

vixenheart:  
oh no. that screenname is no good. Give her back her name, you heathens!

*

ResistanceisButyl:

[image: _Allura sits tucked into an ugly grey armchair with her tablet on her lap, her hair in a messy bun falling out of its pins, looking cute and faintly morose._ ]

I can’t stand looking at this. Y’all have 48 hours to cough up her username before I come get it.

*

halcyon-quintants:

oh my god. Come on guys, it’s her _name_ stop hoarding it to rp porn

*

breeeliss

Never mind Matt. whoever has it has 24 hours before I find them, and fistfight them in the parking lot of Vesprit Sal’s

1,234,203 Notes  
Tagged: #allura of altea, #defenders of earth, #stop being fucking gremlins, #i fucking swear this fandom sometimes, #I am also so bi and so useless OP, #so bi

* * *

[video: _The hangers for the MFE-Ares fighters is lit with the soft light of the setting sun, a deep red spilling across the concrete and painting the pale metal of the planes in faint reddish pink not unlike blood washing down a sink. Lt. James Griffin sits on a wing of one of the MFE-Ares fighters with Princess Allura of Altea, LTJG Lance Serrano lays sprawled across the wing, his head in her lap. A bottle sits between James and Allura half full of a dark amber liquid._

_“Huh,” Ryan Kinkade says out of frame, something in his tone suggests that he’s just now putting together a puzzle._

_“Shut up!” hisses Nadia Rizavi from behind the camera, “be quiet.”_

_There’s a long silence broken only by Allura’s soft laugh as Lance waves one hand, clearly narrating some story before pointing at James who shakes his head as if denying something. Lance points again, his voice is emphatic even if his words are indistinct._

_“Do it, Jamie!” Nadia yells and Ryan sighs. James looks over his shoulder and flips them off._

_“I thought we were being sneaky,” Ryan comments wryly._

_Nadia makes a dismissive noise in the back of her throat. “I want a song,” she says, a whine working into her tone, “and I’m tired of waiting.”_

_Lance rolls into a sloppy cross-legged seat and says something while gesturing emphatically. Allura and James look at each for a moment before shrugging._

_James cocks his head to the side and leans back on his hands before opening his mouth and letting a surprisingly pleasant tenor spill from his throat like whisky. “I have never known peace,” he sings, soft and low—the song echoing across the hanger as if it were a concert hall, “like the damp grass that yields to me/ I have never known hunger/ like the insects that feast on me.”_

_“Not the song I thought he’d pick,” Nadia whispers. Ryan makes a noncommittal noise._

_“We lay here for years or for hours,” Allura sings, her voice a husky alto that joins James’ like a river meeting the sea. Lance flops back into his boneless sprawl, his head in her lap. She cards her fingers through his hair absently as she sings. “Two corpses we were/ two corpses I saw.”_

_Nadia makes a faintly unhappy sound, small and distressed, “why are they always so sad when they get like this?”_

_Ryan sighs, a slow breath rattling out of his lungs like the last breath of a dying man. “You know why.”_

_Nadia doesn’t reply, but the video doesn’t end. She holds the camera steady as the pair sings their strange and haunting love song. Lance reaches up and tangles his fingers in Allura’s hair, a gesture affectionate and familiar. Allura brushes her knuckles across his cheek, soft and fond, as she sings. James holds the bottle between two fingers, his eyes closed, head tilted as if listening to a distant cord, his voice a low counterpoint to Allura’s lilting alto._

_[ “And they’ll find us in a week/ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egwkDB5ZzKI)_

__

_[when the buzzards get loud/ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egwkDB5ZzKI) _

_[after the insects have made their claim/](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egwkDB5ZzKI) _

__

[after the foxes have known our taste/](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egwkDB5ZzKI)

  


[after the raven has had his say”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egwkDB5ZzKI)

__

_“I don’t think we should let them drink alone anymore,” Nadia whispers to Ryan. “They get morbid.”_

_Ryan says nothing as the pair sweep into the final refrain of the song, the notes shivering in the dying light. Allura’s fingers have gone still in Lance’s hair and James leans towards her, braced on one hand. Their voices are sweet and eerie as they rise and fall in the dusk. When the last note dies on Allura’s lips, James offers her the bottle, the gesture oddly gentle. She takes it regally, like a queen accepting tribute, and Lance laughs._

_Ryan hums a little, the sound oddly remorseful. “Agreed.”_ ]

therealRizavi  
312,349 views

They worry me sometimes. #welovethem #butweworry #theyarebannedfromwhiskey #theyalwaysdothis #thosepipestho @griffinwings @deadshotLance

6,390 comments

yalltron: they’re sirens

frankexchangeofviews: 1) thank you for your service & your sacrifices are not forgotten, 2) @griffinwings, god dammit man, is there anything you _aren’t_ good at?

vixenheart: this if fine, this is okay, I totally didn’t need a functioning heart. Feel free to rip it out and stomp on it.

DeathandGravity: somewhere a coastline is missing its lorelei, holy shit

EightRoundsRapid: that’s a lorelei that can run me aground any day, jsyk

itscharacterforming: @EightRoundsRapid dude, time and place

swagitician: I feel like I should be asking if the Garrison has good mental health services. Does it have good mental health services?

Wisdom-Like-Silence: thank you for all you do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1.) I had a moment of complete idiocy or something and managed to COMPLETELY DELETE MY FIC trying to clear out the bazillion extra chapters that it had accumulated while I was editing. I am so sorry and apparently cannot be left alone with technology
> 
> 2) If you are not following [abandoned and urbex](https://abandonedandurbex.tumblr.com/) you should reconsider that decision.
> 
> 3) [Kathe drew me art of the sirens' scene!](https://mandolinearts.tumblr.com/post/180320490261/we-will-have-beds-imbued-with-mildest-scent-and)


	6. low city flatline

**_t – 0 hours_ **

There are days, Ryan thinks to himself as he watches the support pillar start to crack in slow-motion—ricocheting bits of concrete pinging off the walls with whining little _zings_ that raise the hair on the back of his neck—when it really just doesn’t pay to get out of bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [... and a wake up](https://8tracks.com/chronolith1/and-a-wake-up?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button) from [chronolith1](http://8tracks.com/chronolith1?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button) on [8tracks Radio](https://8tracks.com?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button).
> 
> I give you a playlist. please don't hurt me.


	7. back in black

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in honor of my state no longer having that anti-intellectual little gremlin as a governor have a chapter early.
> 
> Don't get used to it, because the next couple of weeks are batshit insane for me.

#####  _Breaking News: Extremists Strike Joint-Planning Summit_

A massive explosion rocked Phalt City as pro-human extremists attacked a joint-planning summit between United Earth Military Services and the Voltron Coalition. Eye witness reports suggest a series of coordinated explosions detonated structures within the new Joint Chief’s of Staff compound, ‘the Terminus,’ destabilizing the structure. UEMS forces are already on the scene and local law enforcement are working to evacuate civilians in the surrounding area.

Developing…

* * *

Verity @useofpsychology  
WHAT. THE. FUCK. IS. GOING. ON #galaxygarrison #PhaltCityAttacks

[image: _a dust plume reaches to the sky amid collapsing buildings. A young woman in the foreground has both hands pressed to her mouth, eyes wide._ ]

Dizmit Rha @verylittlegravitas  
@useofpsychology Oh shit. Is that the new Coalition building?

Verity @useofpsychology  
@verylittlegravitas Yes! They were meeting today, weren’t they?

stress & repressed @ineedofcoffee  
@useofpsychology shit shit shit I’m like two miles from there. Literally everything has come to a stop. I’m supposed to have a meeting with (tbh)

What ails you @jaundicedoutlook  
@useofpsychology @verylittlegravitas They were, Garrison just sent out a press release

Verity @useofpsychology  
@ineedofcoffee oh no, stay safe! Please keep us updated!

* * *

##### IMMEDIATE RELEASE Release No: NR-203-1431 August 12, 2XXX Phalt City Attacks

Structural damage sustained to the Coalition joint-chiefs’ compound, ‘the Terminus,’ due to blasts caused by diphenylamine explosions have caused the collapse of the two rear buildings. Early reports suggest the tachyon reactor housed at the center of the Terminus is undamaged and under security lock-down. Terrorists holding the main building hostage have been neutralized, but additional damage to the building have necessitated immediate evacuation of all personnel in the surrounding areas…

* * *

**_t-26 hours_ **

Shiro frowns at the briefing report. It’s impeccably written. He has the distinct impression that, if it were possible, the footnotes would have footnotes. He hates every single request, suggestion, and tactical observation written within it. He also knows without a shadow of a doubt that the damned thing has already been approved because Lieutenant James Griffin does precisely nothing without the complete confidence that he will get his own way in the end. He’s starting to appreciate how Griffin manages to drive Keith right up a wall simply by breathing.

“Lieutenant Commander Shirogane.” Iverson says mildly. “Do you have a critique of the plan put forward by Lieutenant Griffin?”

Shiro eyes Iverson for a moment, who responds with a bland look of his own, before sighing. “I wanted it noted for the record that I think sending Voltron out of immediate comms range—no offense intended for the quantum-entangled communications array—is tactically unsound.”

“Offense ceaselessly taken!” Matt interjects before leaning forward to put his elbows on the conference table, “but I second the criticism and suggest that we find an alternative method to go POO hunting with these assholes.”

Sam sighs and shakes his head, “While I deplore the language you chose to use to express yourself, I have to agree I have reservations with this plan.”

“Permission to respond?” Griffin asks. Shiro watches as he folds his hands behind his back, one wrist caught in a loose grasp, his gaze somewhere about a foot above the assembled brass. Matt catches Shiro’s eye and blinks slowly, message clear: _be prepared for some bullshit_. A muscle in Griffin’s jaw tenses for a moment. 

“Permission granted,” Iverson sighs. There’s something about James, Shiro’s noticed, something in the way he falls into military forms and traditions when stressed or unsure.

“From intel collected from the 2-shop—”

_two shop?_ , Shiro mouths to Matt.

_intelligence,_ Matt mouths back.

Shiro thinks that Griffin’s eye twitches, just a little bit, but he doesn’t break stride in his presentation—

“We are certain that local terrorist organizations are in maintaining an operational holding pattern while Voltron is in theatre.” Griffin doesn’t move, but the screen behind him shifts to an aerial shot of the newly completed joint compound with an infrared view overlain with tactical locations highlighted. “Coordinating with both Voltron Coalition forces—“ at this Shiro gives Matt a sharp look and he shrugs expressively “— and local law enforcement we have organized and allowed strategic media leaks of a false ‘joint-summit’ of UEMS and Voltron Coalition leaders at the Terminus—” Shiro gives Matt an even sharper look and gets a sheepish smile in return “—that allows us to both secure high-risk personnel and contain combatants. If I can direc—”

“You’re making yourselves a target,” Shiro interrupts. He recognizes Griffin’s snowing technique, it’s probably one that’s probably worked well for the Lieutenant before.

Griffin’s gaze flickers to him for a second before snapping back to a point about two feet off his left shoulder. “It is a calculated and contained risk supported by two-shop’s analysis.”

“You’re making yourselves _bait_ ,” Shiro says.

“It is a contained risk supported by the—” Griffin starts.

“I’ve read the report,” Shiro interrupts, “I disagree with your assessment. There is no reason to make yourselves, and the people in the compound, potential victims.”

“Reports of the Terminus’ operational capacity may have been,” Griffin falters for a moment. Shiro thinks there might be a hint of a blush riding his high cheekbones, “assessed at a higher capacity than has currently been achieved,” Griffin continues. “Civilian and non-combat personnel have not yet been assigned to the Terminus duty roster,” Griffin continues—his gaze somewhere above Shiro’s left shoulder. “All non-mission essential personnel and non-combatants will remain behind the wire until such time as operations have ended.”

“You fudged the books,” Shiro states. He thinks that Griffin looks briefly pained.

“We supplied non-taskforce members of UEMS and the public with a more optimistic projection of related deadlines than has been realized,” Griffin deflects. Sam coughs into one fist and Griffin’s delicate flush climbs to his ears.

Shiro doesn’t know if he wants to laugh at Griffin’s sheer audacity in manipulating whole swaths of UEMS commands through creative use of military paperwork, or punch him. Shiro’s sympathy with Keith, if this is what he’s been dealing with the past year, swells beyond words.

Griffin’s chin goes up, a defiant little head tilt that tells Shiro far more about the Lieutenant than he thinks Griffin realizes. “All related reports have been appended to this mission briefing.”

Shiro just bets they have. Explains why Griffin’s mission briefing runs to the hundreds of pages.

“That still leaves your team as the obvious target,” Shiro says, and is pleased when his voice remains perfectly calm and polite. It’s almost funny how very like his brothers Griffon looks, right down to the way his jaw firms up like he’s about to take a punch every time he hears something he dislikes. Shiro looks to Sam rather than at Griffon, arching one eyebrow before continuing: “Any plan with such a high risk that leaves a team without immediate support needs to be reconsidered.”

Something goes sharp and vicious in Griffin’s gaze that Shiro catches only a moment too late. “With all due respect, sir,” Griffin says lowly, “I would submit my operational credibility far exceeds anyone else’s in this room—” at Sam’s soft cough Griffin draws in a slow breath like he’s counting to ten, “—at least with this regard. And, if you would like, I would be willing to show you our detailed analysis of the matter.”

Shiro blinks. Matt presses a hand to his mouth and raises his eyebrows at Shiro, who has not blinked from his study of Griffin’s sharp profile as he keeps his gaze distant with that perfect military posture. It’s been a long time since he’s been told ‘go fuck yourself’ in such crisp military precision. 

“You require Voltron to be removed from the operational theatre for at least three hours before and after the mission window,” Shiro says instead of what he wants to say, which would be both deeply rude and probably not coherent, “however, you have one of the pilots of Voltron as part of your essential personnel.”

Griffin doesn’t do anything as crass as smile, but his expression gets the suggestion that he would _like_ to, that he’s _thinking_ about it. “Paladin Kogane made it quite clear in his supplemental materials attached to Paladin Lance Serrano’s PCA paperwork that the Voltron team has an alternative formation that can be utilized for situations in which Paladin Serrano is unavailable, injured, or—as is in this situation—PCA-ed to a different unit.”

There’s something oddly possessive in Griffin’s tone when he finally looks Shiro straight in the eyes, “I have a detailed analysis from 2-shop, sir, if you would like to consider it, that demonstrates how Second Lieutenant Lance Serrano’s particular skillset is best suited to the 0317 MOS. Sir.”

* * *

stress & repressed @inneedofcoffee  
@useofpsychology @verylittlegravitas Update: still stuck on the far side of the Terminus but not dead! #phaltcityattacks

Verity @useofpsychology  
@inneedofcoffee oh no! I thought they were doing evacuations??

stress & repressed @inneedofcoffee  
@useofpsychology @verylittlegravitas they did evacuations for everyone in the immediate blast zone and (tbh)

Dizmit Rha @verylittlegravitas  
@inneedofcoffee oh fuck, stay safe

What ails you @verylittlegravitas   
@useofpsychology @jaundicedoutlook as much as I hate to be this bitch, but, where is Voltron?

What ails you @jaundicedoutlook  
@verylittlegravitas I don’t know and that worries me.

* * *

**_t-12hrs_ **

“This plan is bullshit,” Keith says, as he drops into a chair across from Shiro, arms crossed and quietly fuming. 

Shiro pulls his paperwork out of the way of Keith’s feet as he tosses them up on the top of Shiro’s desk without comment. 

He’d like to agree that the plan is, indeed, bullshit, but he’s been overridden, countermanded and shouted down by the brass above Commander Holt and Commander Iverson. Griffin’s written up a tidal wave of reports, additional analysis, and joint-ops contingency plans that seems to address every hole he or Matt could identify. The combination leaves Shiro feeling off-center and unsettled, as if there was an itch right below his skin he couldn’t reach.

He taps to close mission brief file with a bit more force than he means to with his prosthetic and the entire thing flickers in protest.

“You don’t like it any better than I do,” Keith observes, snapping Shiro out of his increasingly frustrated thoughts. Shiro blinks at him. “Being sent away,” Keith clarifies, “being out of range if something goes wrong.”

“We have our orders,” he says in the most neutral tone he can manage. “They have been very clear.”

He doesn’t often miss Admiral Sanda, but he does now. She at least had the decency to override and dismiss Shiro’s concerns to his face. She might have made choices that threatened all of them—made choices that he frankly still can’t comprehend, but no one could argue that she didn’t always have the best interest of those under her command and protection at the front of her mind. 

He finds it difficult to respect a command that he hasn’t seen until it decides to materialize to countermand him. Shiro doesn’t know who Admiral Donnel Udina is, but he dearly wishes the man would actually come to the Garrison. If for no other reason than he’d really like to have a face to fantasize about punching repeatedly.

Keith makes a deeply rude noise, “like either of us have been all that great at following orders. Clear or not.”

Shiro puts his tablet down and looks at Keith for a long, long time. Keith stares back, angry but not defiant, just strangely expectant. Like he’s waiting for Shiro to catch up. Shiro puts his elbows on the edge of the desk and cocks his head. “You have an idea?”

Keith grins, fast and feral, “I might have had a talk with Matt.”

* * *

What ails you @jaundicedoutlook  
@inneedofcoffee check in?

Verity @useofpsychology  
@inneedofcoffee it’s been a couple of hours, are you still stuck?

Dizmit Rha @verylittlegravitas  
@inneedofcoffee Candace, you’re starting to stress us out over here

* * *

**_t – 3 hours_ **

“Are you certain this will work,” Shiro asks as he turns the little device over in his hands.

“Certain? Enh,” Matt says with a little shrug, “There is no certainty with science.”

Shiro cuts Matt a sharp look. “Matt,” he says lowly, “I need to know if I can—”

“Ease down there, papa wolf,” Matt says. He rakes his hair back out of his eyes and makes a face when his fingers hit snags. His tangled mane is the only indication for how long he’s been up. “It’s as certain as I can make it. It’s both secure and, theoretically, untraceable. Pidge and I were already working on something similar—we just accelerated the schedule a little bit.”

“Who knows about the communicator?” Shiro asks as he tucks it away.

“You, me—obviously—Keith, Pidge and I think she might have told James,” Matt shrugs at Shiro’s raised eyebrows, “Yeah, I’m not sure when that happened either. But it’s useful here, since I’m not frontline for this mission—James is _intensely_ paranoid about … everything right now and I don’t actually blame him,” Shiro makes a questioning noise in the back of his throat as he studies the little communicator and Matt sighs. “Look man, I know he’s managed to piss you off, but digging through his—frankly ridiculous—sea of mission debriefings, he’s been chasing these assholes around for nearly a year and they keep disappearing on him.”

Shiro makes a thoughtful humming noises before he can stop himself and the frowns, “I’ve read all his reports,” he says. “The taskforce isn’t old enough to generate the paperwork he’s got filed behind it.” 

Honestly, Shiro is starting to think there’s something pathological in the way Griffin uses military paperwork like a weapon. 

“And yet our boy has been running counter-terrorism missions as a temporary assignment for a lot longer, if you start looking through his mission reports going back to, oh, when he tapped Lance for his team.” Matt leans back and shrugs, too casual to be anything other than deliberate. “And besides it’s in what he’s not saying that I found something interesting.”

There’s something in Matt’s tense, closed-off posture—in the tightness around his eyes and his forced casualness that pulls at Shiro. Shiro blinks as Matt gives him the ‘trying-beam-an-idea-straight-into-your-head’ stare that Matt used to give him when they were just cadets and Shiro’d been floundering trying to answer a question in front of class. He’s not missed this stare.

“You think he thinks there’s a mole,” Shiro says in a rush as the epiphany hits.

“Jesus, quiet down,” Matt hisses. “I’m saying I think he’s _certain_ there’s a mole and is trying to flush them out. He’s been leaving breadcrumbs through his paperwork for someone to pick up on his game, but you have to know what you’re looking for to find it.”

“Why can’t he just say that then?” Shiro asks, frustrated beyond words. 

“First, have you met James?” Matt asks sardonically. “Second, when you’re hunting traitors, the last thing you do is advertise that fact.”

Shiro is forcibly reminded that for the three years the Paladins spent missing, Matt had been on the run from the Galra, hiding from Druids, and constantly under the threat of being sold out. If there’s someone who knows something about hunting traitors in their midst, it’d be Matt. Shiro sighs. “Right,” he says by way of an apology, “so you think he’s not just hunting terrorists, he’s after someone within the Garrison.”

Matt runs a hand through his hair and shrugs. “Maybe not in the Garrison, but definitely within the UEMS at large. There’s a lot of contingency plans that he’s got going that hang on nothing going wrong with in the UEMS chain of command.”

“So, if something _does_ ,” Shiro finishes, “he knows where his traitor is.”

“Yep,” Matt says, making the ‘p’ pop. “Which is a twisty line of thought for someone as supposedly straightforward and rule-abiding as our young Lieutenant.”

Shiro shoots Matt a dry look. “Were we at the same briefing?” He asks. “Lieutenant Griffin seems have a plenty twisty line of thinking all on his own.”

Matt rocks back on his heels considering and then shakes his head. “Too many moving pieces for this to all be just our young and desperately unhappy Lieutenant.”

“Veronica,” Shiro says. Several things become clear to him all at once. “That’s got her hallmarks all over it—though I’m still sure James can be just as devious if pushed,” Matt shrugs a little, unconcerned with the distinction. Shiro rolls his eyes at him. “And if she thinks that someone within UEMS is working with the extremists, she’s going to try to take care of it all in-house.”

“Or as completely in-house as she can get,” Matt agrees. “She’s looking at a broader picture than Earth politics.”

Shiro pulls off his helmet to rub at his eyes. “She’s worried that if Voltron cleans up a traitor within the UEMS that non-earth sphere allies won’t trust them.”

“And she’s worried that if Voltron does all the work it’ll continue to foment this sort of isolationist, ‘pro-human’ wankery,” Matt adds. He sighs and shakes his head. “We’ve got a bunch of people who are used to running understaffed, out-gunned, and desperate. That doesn’t change just because you and the other paladins are suddenly in the picture.”

Shiro makes a face but doesn’t argue.

“And if I had to guess,” Matt says with a jerk of his chin to where Lance and Allura stand close together, awkward and anxious, “Veronica is banking on a hail mary from yonder Blue Paladin and Red Lion if anything goes _really_ wrong.”

“They could have just _said_ ,” Shiro starts again and Matt shakes his shoulder.

“No,” he says seriously, “they really couldn’t have. For a whole host of both good and bad reasons.”

Shiro sighs and wishes not for the first time and probably not for the last that things could be simple. It’d probably been unreasonable from the beginning to assume that things would get less complicated rather than more once they got back to Earth. At no point in history did adding more people to an already tense situation result in things simplifying.

“Hey,” Matt says, shaking his shoulder again. He smiles, sweet and sincere, when Shiro looks up at him. “We’ve still got their backs, even if they don’t realize it.”

Shiro looks to where Allura and Lance stand wrapped in a universe of their own creation and watches as they turn as a set to greet Griffin when he walks up to them, all lazy arrogance covering over his exhaustion and nerves. Shiro wonders, briefly, at the way Lance and Allura open to him like he’s a missing piece of a puzzle slotting into place. He watches as Griffin slings an arm over Lance’s shoulders and absently covers Lance’s mouth with one hand while talking to Allura and she laughs. 

“Huh,” Matt says as Griffin leads Lance away, tossing some laughing remark over his shoulder as he does, and Allura gives them both a short, soft wave. “I wonder how long that’s been going on?”

“I don’t know,” Shiro says softly. He watches Allura watch them leave, a small frown marring her brow. “I don’t know.”

* * *

stressed & repressed @inneedofcoffee  
@useofpsychology @jaundicedview @verylittlegravitas not dead!

Verity @useofpsychology  
@inneedofcoffee GIRL THANK GOD

Dizmit Rha @verylittlegravitas  
@inneedofcoffee that is such a relief we were worried

what ails you @jaundicedview  
@inneedofcoffee yay not dead! (honestly thank fuck and you need to stop working in dangerous places)

stressed & repressed @inneedofcoffee  
@jaundicedview hey

what ails you @jaundicedview  
@inneedofcoffee i’m not wrong

stressed & repressed @inneedofcoffee  
@inneedofcoffee meh. anyway

stressed & repressed @inneedofcoffee  
look who is back in town #voltron #defendersofearth #phaltcityattacks

[image: _Voltron kneels beside a collapsed building holding part of a shattered wall delicately between its fingers_ ] 

Verity @useofpsychology  
@inneedofcoffee YES

* * *

**_t—1 hour_ **

Black’s presence swirls around Shiro like an early morning mist, or water at low tide, a gentle pressure against the back of his mind and at the edge of his thoughts. He swallows back the edge of panic as Black’s thoughts surge against his like a sudden riptide threatening to pull him back under and fling him into the endless abyss of the astral plane. His hands tremble, for a moment, on her controls until she retreats from him, apologetic and hurt.

“Sorry,” he whispers, too soft for comms to register and her presence swirls around him once more like an autumn breeze—cool and with the faint hint of all things dying.

She presses a sense of hurt and loneliness at him and Shiro rubs his mouth feeling ashamed. On the long list of things, he thought he’d have as a PTSD trigger ‘afraid of being re-absorbed into my Lion’ had not been among them. Black threads through his thoughts gently as if unsure of her welcome. He sighs, a low, long rattle of breath and tries to force his shoulders to unknot. There’d been joy, once, when he’d sat in her cockpit—a fierce exultation of freedom—but now he can only feel trepidation, a sort of trembling timidity he loathes.

“Shiro?” Keith’s voice pulls him from his spiraling thoughts and he blinks to find Keith’s comms window open, Keith peering at him with open worry. 

“Sorry,” Shiro says again and hates how he feels like he’s always apologizing. “Just got a little distracted.”

Keith makes a disbelieving noise and Black pushes at him, a wordless sense of frustration with Shiro’s recalcitrance. “Distracted?” Keith echoes. There’s a sharpness to Keith’s gaze that makes him squirm, like Keith can read his every thought in his barest expression. “Worried about the mission, or something else?”

Shiro can’t help the way his eyebrow tries to reach his hairline. “This works from the assumption,” he says drily, “that I’m incapable of worrying about more than one thing at a time.”

Keith gives him an impossibly flat expression.

He looks away and resists the urge to rub the back of his neck. “It’s just the first time,” he says slowly, “that I’ve,” he licks his lips and can’t meet Keith’s eyes, “that I’ve tried piloting since. Well.”

“I didn’t think about that,” Keith says lowly. Shiro looks up into the naked guilt stamped across Keith’s face like a brand. “I, shit, I should have thought of that.”

The combination of Keith’s naked guilt and Black’s shy, furtive nudges against the back of his mind makes him feel an odd combination of protected and ashamed. They will never allow harm to come to him and he knows that with a certainty that he feels for nothing else. Shame washes through him on the heels of that revelation, so close it could be Skoll chasing the sun. Black presses in tight against him, so tight it feels like with one deep breath he’ll break through the skein of reality and fall straight back into that endless plain. 

He can feel his hands shake on her controls, his breath coming thin and shaking, and he has to close his eyes tight against the swell of emotion threatening to crack his chest into pieces.

“Shiro!” Keith’s sudden yell snaps him back into the physical world with a suddenness so intense he gasps from it. Black releases him with a sullen reluctance and he curls over the controls. Tears prickle behind his eyes whether he wills them or no and he’s dimly aware of Keith’s increasingly frantic attempts to get his attention.

“I’m here,” he gasps out, breath difficult and disjointed, “I’m here.”

“Shiro?” Allura’s voice joins Keith’s, confused and uncertain. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he says, and even to his own ears his voice sounds breathless and unsure. “It’s all right.”

Allura’s screen pops up next to Keith’s, a fine line creasing her brow. “I am unconvinced of your reliability,” she says. “Perhaps you want to try that one again?”

Shiro blinks. Those are very definitely not her words, but he recognizes the turn of phrase, something in the sardonic dryness of it tugs at him. “Princess,” she frowns at him and he corrects, “Allura, when did you get so close to Lieutenant Griffin?”

Keith blinks, clearly startled. Shiro thinks that Allura blushes, but with her dark skin tone and the tiny feed of the lion comms he’s not certain. He watches as she looks away and chews on her bottom lip. Keith looks faintly horrified for reasons that Shiro can’t hope to understand. Allura clears her throat and Shiro can see the second it snaps Keith back into focus.

“Don’t try to misdirect,” Allura scolds. “Shiro, are you all right?”

He blows out a breath so hard that it would make his bangs flutter if his helmet didn’t keep them pressed tight to his forehead. 

“It’s been … a while since I’ve piloted Black,” he admits. He doesn’t say that this is the first time he’s piloted Black with this formation. Or, at least the first time with this formation as himself. As his not-clone-self, since his clone had thought he _was_ him--had believed it so completely Black let his clone in, opened to him as if it had been Shiro in truth. Shiro _remembers_ that, remembers the relief flooding through him like water in the desert. He remembers the feeling of Allura in the bond—a cool, collected presence. He remembers Lance-in-Red—Lance’s enthusiasm and faith like a fire under his skin. But the memories are muted and strange, like an audio track that refuses to sync correctly. Nothing feels right within the bond—his memories and his clone’s memories layer over each other in disjointed fragments--and Shiro feels Lance’s absence like an ache, like a hastily pulled tooth. This formation feels unsettled and unsettling, pieces just a tiny bit out of line.

But that’s not a thing he can say to them. Not when Keith is watching him with shadowed eyes and a worried frown. Not when Allura studies him with soft concern.

“There’s a learning curve,” he says instead and smiles.

Keith’s mouth twists and Allura sighs.

“You do realize that the bonds between paladins flows from you to us as well, yes?” Allura says tartly—again there’s an echo of James’ sardonic tone in her words and Shiro wonders at it briefly. “We can all tell when you lie.”

Shiro can’t help the way he looks to Keith for confirmation. Keith winces but nods without looking at him.

Well. Shit.

“Shiro,” Allura says, voice whisper soft. “We are here to support you, remember?”

There’s something that stings, just a little, at having his words turned around on him and he can’t help the eyebrow arch. She just raises one eyebrow herself, the expression pointed and unrepentant. 

“Hate to break up the heartwarming bonding montage,” Pidge breaks in, her feed popping up right under Allura’s. “But are we going to do something other than ‘sit and wait for shit to go sideways’ or no?”

“Pidge,” Keith groans.

“What?” She asks defensively. “You guys were getting Emotions all over the place and you know my feelings on Emotions.”

Shiro can hear the capitol ‘e’ on emotions and has to bite back a grin. Pidge gives them all a distrustful eyeball, as if they might try to shower her in concern as well. Her suspicious glare is so ridiculous it can only be deliberately overdone. Pidge’s lips twitch when he smothers the snicker that wants to bubble out of him.

“Pidge,” Allura says, trying for scolding but there’s an edge of laughter to her tone. “You talk as if emotional openness and bonding is a communicable disease.”

“It is,” Pidge retorts. “You caught it from James and his team,” she waves a finger (a little off-center to Shiro, down and to the right where Allura’s screen must be for Pidge), “and now you’re trying to get it all over us. I won’t have it. Our emotional stiltedness and general disfunction suit me just fine.”

Allura blinks and then sputters out a little laugh. “You are ridiculous.”

“No,” Pidge says, and there’s something in her expression that suggests that she’s deeply pleased with herself. “I’m defending my emotional boundaries. You can’t make me be functional and communicate like a fucking adult. I refuse.”

Shiro can’t help it: he cracks up. Curls over Black’s controls for the second time inside ten minutes breathless, but this time with laughter. When he pulls himself together Allura is watching him with a soft, fond expression and Pidge looks like a cat that’s gotten the field mouse—self-satisfied and very smug. Keith sighs and gives him a look. Or, more precisely, a _Look_ , one that promises that there will be a conversation later regardless of Shiro’s feelings on the matter.

“As much as I would like to argue with all of you about literally everything going on in this conversation,” Hunk cuts in. “I think we need to go back to the entire question of whether or not we’re just going to sit here and wait for something to go wrong with Griffin’s plan or be proactive.”

Keith makes a thoughtful noise. “You think we should be proactive,” he asks—the way he says it makes Shiro think that Keith already knows Hunk’s answer. Keith cocks his head, the ghost of a smile on the edges of his expression. “You think something is already going wrong with Griffin’s plan?”

“That plan is basically asking for Murphy to take a baseball bat to it,” Hunk says with disgust. 

“I think Griffin is counting on it,” Shiro says slowly, thinking about his conversation with Matt. He turns over Griffin’s plan in his head and sets it next to Matt’s tense, haunted expression ( _hunting traitors_ , he’d said, _is always such a messy fucking business_ ). On its face it looks like a way lure the extremists into a very tidy trap all under UEMS’ control. 

On its face.

He can see the moment his epiphany strikes the other paladins—the lion bond carrying his wave of frustrated horror to them and returning it fourfold. 

“That _asshole_ ,” Keith snarls. 

“That,” Hunk says with a certain wondering type of horror. “Is a really sneaky, convoluted bit of bullshit.”

“He’s counting on us to come bail him out,” Pidge not quite states, as if she’s hoping someone will correct her. “Even though he never said anything to us? At all?”

“He is going to get himself killed,” Allura says and then her eyes go wide. “ _Lance!_ ”

And on the heels of that epiphany there’s really only one thing Shiro can say: “Form Voltron.”

* * *

stressed & repressed @inneedofcoffee  
honestly I’m not sure why anyone really tries to take on voltron with conventional weapons #voltron #defendersofearth #phaltcityattacks #stupidisasstupiddoes

[image: _a very blurry image of Voltron shielding the Terminus from an unseen attack. Its enormous form curled protectively around the crumpled building_ ]

Verity @useofpsychology  
@inneedofcoffee TALK SHIT GET HIT

stressed & repressed @inneedofcoffee  
@useofpsychology that doesn’t make any sense

Verity @useofpsychology  
@inneedofcoffee DON’T CARE. FUCK ‘EM UP BABY #voltron 

what ails you @jaundicedview  
@useofpsychology is your capslock button broken again?

Verity @usefopsychology  
@jaundicedview IT’S BEEN A VERY STRESSFUL DAY


	8. clusterfuck

“Sonuvabitch,” James mutters under his breath as he thumbs the syringe release of the nociceptor blocker. Cool numbness bleeds along his shoulder, eating most of the pain of the dislocation before he eases the ball of the joint back into the cup with a thick, wet sound. There are less fun ways of spending an afternoon, but at the moment they escape him.

The thing he needs to remember, James thinks to himself, is that no plan survives contact with the enemy. Particularly when the enemy happens to be your own command and are armed with thermite explosives.

They’d gone into this plan with knowledge that they’d probably be outgunned and undermanned—it’s by design that his team is running light and tight; playing for time, rather than playing to win—but the _degree_ to which they are outmatched seems unfairly excessive. He and his team are five sleek ghosts fitted into chameleon suits and infrared optics, with long-barreled FN-FNAR rifles and blades for close work. Experience and 2-shop’s analysis had briefed them to expect civilian ‘operators’ who’d started believing their own stories of stolen valour, armed with questionable weaponry and a really impressive angry streak.

What they’d gotten, however, is at least two full squads of professional killers with high-tech murder toys stolen straight from the Garrison’s own armory.

James is a little proud, honestly, that he’s managed to piss off Admiral Udina to the point the man has invested this level of resources into getting rid of him and his team because they’ve been just _that much_ of a pain in the man’s ass. It’s the satisfaction of a job well done—even if that job is, arguably, getting himself killed playing stupid spy games with his own command structure. The fuckers.

He ducks behind a pylon and swears faintly as the ricochet from some asshole’s blaster sprinkles his hair with concrete dust. The only saving grace of this entire cock-up is their enemies’ apparent inability to hit the broadside of a barn. Though James rather resents playing target practice for a pack of contracted killers. Not how he thought his day was going to go when he got up in this morning. He’d like to blame someone else for his current depressing state of completely fucked but, unfortunately, he’s got no one else to point the finger at except himself. He’d written the script for this entire shitshow in eleven-point font with appropriate bullet-pointed action items. 

One of these days, James reflects, his anal-retentive tendencies are going to get him killed. Probably today, actually.

He wedges himself between a bit of crumbling wall and what had been, in happier and less explosive times, a very pretty spiral staircase, bracing his back against it as he props his rifle against his shoulder. Breathes through the pain of a dislocated-then-relocated shoulder as he fires. His grin at the sick, wet sound of someone’s head exploding thanks to hollow point explosive rounds he’s got packed in is a feral thing and painted pink with his own blood. 

James runs his tongue along the outside of his teeth, tasting the particular not-quite copper tang, and listens.

Footsteps. The heavy tread of a trooper in full tactical gear loaded down with a heavy, blunt-nosed nosed Chekhov shotgun and sonic-edged Occam razors. James counts them down as they move closer to his little hidey-hole, breathes soft and airy through his mouth, rolls his neck and then moves.

Three strikes straight to the base of the throat, right where body armour never really seems to cover, and a hand wrapped the man’s head to yank him hard into James’ knee has one hard-edged killer on the ground groaning.

James hitches his FN-FNAR a little higher before stomping, hard, on the man’s head and the body goes still.

“MFE-team,” he says low and quiet into the comms unit clipped to his collar—Lance’d mocked him, gentle and affectionate, for insisting on duplicate comms systems but he’s glad of it now—”sitrep.”

“I got eyes on a trio doing a perimeter check around the tachyon core,” Lance answers immediately. “I’d take a shot but they’re too close the main reactor—anything hits that fucker and the whole city goes up like the fourth of fucking July.”

It almost makes James smile to hear Ryan’s rolling vowels drip out of Lance’s mouth. Almost.

“You secure?” James asks. He does a quick scan down a hallway, his infrared optics highlighting figures waiting at choke points and fights not to swear.

“As secure as can be,” Lance replies. He pauses for a long moment that does bad, bad things to James’ heartrate. “Can’t really un-ass from here though.”

“Define.”

“Leg’s a little … broke.” 

Now James does swear, hard and as vicious as he knows how. And with the full weight of six generations of military behind it, it’s as filthy as filthy can get.

Lance laughs—pained but delighted. “Aw,” he croons. “You do love me.”

“Please do me the good grace of not dying until we get out of here,” James says. “So, I can have the pleasure of killing you myself.”

Lance laughs again like an asshole. “Noted.”

“I’ve got Nadia,” Ryan reports. James can hear her swearing in the background of Ryan’s comms, her voice crackling on and off the comms like a ghost caught on tape. “Head wound, but mobile.”

“I fucked ‘em up, Jamie,” Nadia says. “Fuckers tried to pin me, and I gutted them, just like you showed me.”

James’ blood runs cold at the idea of someone pining Nadia down, holding her still, and it takes him a moment to breathe through the instinctive fury. “Good girl,” he says after the rage lets go of his vocal cords, “you keep doing that.”

“Can do,” she says, just as savage.

“Ina,” he asks. He breathes in, breathes out, and takes a pair of shots—the recoil beating his shoulder like a drum, the pain spikes through him, dull and aching—and smiles at the soft thumps of bodies slumping to the ground. “Report.”

“Here,” she breathes into the comms. Her voice is a soft, feathering thing and something tight behind his ribs uncoils to hear it. “I found the charges they set through the upper levels.”

“Outstanding,” James says, viciously pleased. “Loc?”

There’s a beat of silence. “Two up,” Ina reports. “Three over. Boogies on the stairwell and at main lift.”

“They’re only boogies when we’re in the air, Ina,” Lance says, laughing.

“They are enemies,” Ina says, flat and matter-of-fact, “and we are going to kill them.”

“Yeah, baby,” Lance sighs. “We are.”

There’s a certainty that flows between the two of them, like it doesn’t occur to them that there could be any other outcome, that James takes refuge in. He shelters under their confidence like a child behind their mother’s skirts. They are five against twenty-five, trapped under the rubble of the Terminus’ shattered skeleton, waiting for a cavalry that James isn’t entirely certain is coming. There are times, he reflects, when he might have been too subtle.

He might have signed his own death warrant, James realizes with a nasty shock, trusting in Keith Kogane’s ability to pick up a social clue.

“I have movement,” Ryan reports. “Squad moving towards the reactor.”

“Fuckin’ cock sucking son of _whores_ ,” James says and picks up his pace. “I’m on intercept.”

“Jamie,” Nadia says sharply, he can see in his mind’s eye her tight, frustrated expression. “There’s at least ten of them and one of you,”

“Yeah, well,” James replies as he racks his rifle, “I am a badass.”

“You’re an _asshole_ ,” Lance says before he groans, a low throbbing noise, in the way only someone with a shattered limb sounds when they try to move.

“Stay right the fuck where you are, Serrano,” James says before adding on belatedly, “that’s an order.”

“Yeah.” Lance pants, airy and pained. “You’re not my real squad leader—not like I listen to him either.”

James ducks blaster fire, sliding underneath it like dropping underneath a water line, so it slips over his head hot and deadly. “Which squad leader?” He asks, unable to prevent the sardonic twist of his words, “Voltron has so many.”

“All right,” Lance sighs and James can hear him rack a new round. “So, we’re a mess, stop rubbing it in.”

“We?” Nadia says. She sounds amused and breathless—like she’s been running. “Who is this ‘we’? You’re ours now.”

“Technically,” Lance says with a prissy tone that has James trying not to laugh even as he beats some asshole’s face in with the butt of his rifle. “We’re all in the same command, I mean, isn’t Shiro your commander too? He’s the Captain of the Atlas.”

“Enh,” Nadia makes a noncommittal noise. “Technically, our chain of command is currently … unclear.”

“Unclear,” Lance repeats with naked disbelief. “We’ve been running around as a team with a fancy name and everything for nearly a _year_. How can our chain of command be _unclear_?”

“Creative paperwork.” Ryan answers. 

“Oh my god,” Lance says faintly.

“It’s one of James’ many talents,” Ryan continues, and James makes a wordless noise of pure protest. Ryan laughs softly. “You have authority issues, my friend.”

“I’m in the military,” James protests. He pauses for moment to take aim before picking off two men in the silvered tactical armour that only came from certain security companies before the Galra occupation—the ones with questionable accounting and even more questionable morals—and James has a sudden epiphany as to Admiral Udina’s ultimate motives. “I’m from a military family.”

“That just makes you better at breaking the rules while not looking like you’re breaking the rules,” Nadia says sweetly. There’s a wet crack over her comms—the particular heavy crunch of vertebra snapping—and James has never been more proud of his team. Lethal and lovely, every one of them.

“I read a study,” Ina says thoughtfully. She pauses for a moment and they all hold their breath with her as a soft beeping slowly goes quiet. Ina grunts softly, a little ‘there, got it’ sound in the back of her throat. “That children of career military have higher rates of perfectionism and problems with authority.”

“I don’t have a problem with authority,” James says, punctuating each word with a short, sharp punch to a man’s solar plexus. Even through the heavy body armour with its kinetic shielding, the blows rock his opponent enough to stagger him backwards. James switches to a blade, slim and gleaming, and slams it through the gap between armour and helmet with a snarl. 

“As long as you _are_ the authority,” Nadia replies.

“Oh my god,” Lance repeats.

“Stop,” James tries to demand, but he knows the edge of laughter to his voice undercuts him. “You’re scaring the FNG.”

“I’ve been part of your team for, like, nine months,” Lance complains. There’s the soft pop-pop-pop of Lance’s FN-FNAR and James knows Lance has the synaptic scrambler rounds loaded—nasty bit of ammo dreamed up by 2 shop’s snake eaters. “When am I going to stop being the fucking new guy?”

“Never,” Ryan says serenely. “James. Duck.”

“What?” James blinks and scans the hallway. Wherever Ryan has managed to hole up, it’s a good nest because James can’t guess his trajectory.

“ _Get DOWN!_ ”

Training reasserts itself. He drops, reflexively, and hears a flat crack and whine overhead. He presses his forehead to the cracked marble tiles for a moment and breathes through his mouth. 

“Ryan,” he asks softly.

“Got ‘em,” Ryan says. The shot snarls over James’ head and there’s the soft, wet sound of exploding grey matter. “You’re clear. Go back to doing improv theatre or whatever.”

“Fuck you,” James mumbles from the floor as Ryan jogs into view. Ryan hauls him to his feet and spends several seconds brushing the dust from James with a sly sort of obsequiousness until James elbows him in the face. “Nadia?” 

“Took a shaft down, said it was faster,” Ryan replies with a sigh.

James can’t help the way his eyebrow wings towards his hairline at Ryan’s wry tone.

“And it was faster!” Nadia’s voice crackles over her comms. “Whee!”

“Fucking adrenaline junkie,” Ryan says. They look at each other for a moment and share a commiserating grimace. Certain things apparently held true regardless of time, space, or their impending mortality.

“Guilty!” Nadia sings back. “Motherfuckers,” she snarls abruptly. Ryan and James both tense, nothing good ever came from Nadia using that hard, flat tone. “They set blast charges all through the core.”

“Shit,” Lance sighs. “I’ve got eyes on their engineer. He’s linking something to a central black-box at the core. You want me to pop him?”

“And how fast will they return fire?” James asks. Lance is suspiciously quiet for a long beat before making a disgusted tongue click. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Nadia, are you able to start disarming the charges?”

“I’m not as fast as Ina,” Nadia says, but he can hear her already get to work, the soft _snick-snick_ of wires being cut. “So, you might want to think up a plan B.”

“I think we are pretty firmly at plan C,” James grunts as he slings his rifle onto his back and helps Ryan pry apart the lift doors. They both look down into the dark pit of the shaft and then back at each other. Ryan gives him a little ‘welp’ shrug before catching him around the back of his head and pressing a burning kiss to his forehead. James blows out a breath. They both ignore how it shakes, just a little bit, at the edges. 

“Plan C?” Lance asks. There’s a soft, scrapping noise—like a heavy bag being dragged across uneven ground—and Lance swearing, breathy and pained, for a moment before his comms lapses back into silence.

“Clusterfuck,” James says shortly as he clips himself to the lift cables and kicking off. Ryan follows him, looking grim. The sound of the clip-line racing over the cables is a high, shrieking whine that sets his teeth on edge. “And stop moving, jackass,” he tells Lance, “we’re headed to you.”

“Unfortunately,” Lance says in hissing whisper. James can hear the heavy tread of troopers in tactical gear through Lance’s com. “You aren’t the only one.”

“I can divert to him,” Nadia says. “Just—fuck, give me a second, fucking nasty piece of shit wiring.”

A soft thump and a short, choked scream before Ina says calmly, “I have solved the problem.”

“Ina,” Lance breathes, “you are my favorite, I just want you to know that.”

“I know,” Ina says, smug, as Ryan laughs so softly the comms almost don’t pick it up over the rushing of the cable line as the pair of them plunge down into the darkness of the reactor heart. James wonders at himself, at all of them, that they can be so oddly calm in the face of what is very likely to be their (very violent, terribly heroic, incredibly stupid) deaths. 

Fuck Kogane and his inability to catch a damned hint even though James had left them littered around as if he were Gretel cosplayer with a breadcrumb fetish.

He hits the bottom of the lift shaft a second before Ryan and they flank the doors, Ryan going high as James drop low, swinging the FN-FNAR into position snug against his shoulder. The hallway is a long streak of darkness, not even the emergency runners to light their way. There’s something deeply underwhelming at the seemingly endless dark of the corridor. James glances up at Ryan who gives him a little shrug—just a tiny flick of movement.

They move in tandem, the infrared optics making easy sweep across the hallways despite the darkness, taking meter by meter in slow, creeping strides. Nadia slides in behind them, a sleek dark figure fitting in with them like a lock’s tumbler sliding home. 

“Charges disabled,” she whispers. “At least through the radial hallways.”

“Just leaves the ones they’ve got set along the core,” Ina replies. “I have Lance.”

“Status?” James asks. It’s a challenge to keep his breathing even and smooth with adrenaline spiking through his system, sharp and hot, but he’s got long familiarity and specific exercises for moments just like this and so his heart rate stays steady. He glances back at Nadia and gives her a little head jerk. Her smile is a snap of white teeth in the dark as she slides around him.

“You could just ask me,” Lance complains. There’s a soft pop and Lance grunts. “And then there was one,” he says softly, mostly to himself, before saying louder, “just that engineer huddled up next to the core.”

“Lance is not mobile,” Ina reports. “I have his leg braced, but that is only a temporary measure.”

Lance clicks his tongue, a soft and annoyed sound, “I’m mobile enough if need be,” he says. “It just hurts like a bitch and I’m not gonna be winning any footraces.”

Nadia slides along the hallway and holds up two fingers, makes a fist and then a quick, sharp slice with the flat of her hand. James and Ryan kneel, FN-FNARs braced at their shoulders as Nadia unsheathes her blade with a practiced flick of her wrist. There’s only the softest rustle of cloth as she takes a running leap at a bulky figure, riding them to the ground with her thighs wrapped around their neck. Her blade snakes out, a gleaming arch of metal highlighted by enemy scope lights, and there’s a gurgling gasp before silence fills the hallway like still water.

They follow her down into the dark, flanking her as she looks over the edge of landing. The tachyon reactor core is a blue-white glowing column of power trapped behind black amino-silicate and titanium reinforced steel, untouched by the destruction around it. 

The fine hairs along James’ arms raise as they make their way down, reacting to the energy emissions of the tachyon drive. Damned thing could probably power a starship if they could figure a way around the condensation issue. The entire apparatus hums at barely audible decibel that seems to sync with his heartbeat—as if the mass effect fields generated by the reactor could respond to James’ own bio-electromagnetic field. James eyes it distrustfully as they move to flank.

“Boogie dope?” He murmurs into comms.

“Three meters to your right, kneeling behind the main blast shield,” Lance reports in a whisper. “I can see him. Oh yes I can,” Lance croons—his voice dropping into the oddly sweet tone that he adopts when lining up difficult shots, “now if he’d just stick his head out so I can blow it off.”

“Di~irty,” Nadia whispers into the comms.

Lance just snickers while Ina says—crisp and cool, “if things go sideways, the core is designed to drop into the electromagnetic shielding reservoir below. Logical extrapolation of enemy movement suggests that our engineer is trying to overwrite safety protocols to trigger a collapse of the reactor’s mass effect fields and result in a Vavilov-Cherenkov shockwave.”

“The one that’ll sink the city,” Lance adds helpfully. “Even without the extra charges detonating.”

“I deeply resent their ability to craft plans with contingencies to ensure maximum destruction,” James sighs. 

“It is extremely rude,” Ina agrees. “I liked it better when they were making tiny little bombs out of cow patties and cleaning supplies.”

“Not to interrupt our little dip into nostalgia,” Lance interjects sharply, “but it looks like our boy is getting close finishing up his little hacking project. Either get that blackbox away from him, or I pop him now and damn the potential consequences.”

Ryan holds a finger up before making a quick two fingered flick from his eyes forward. He drops to one knee, FN-FNAR braced high. “I have explosives loaded.”

Lance clicks his tongue. “Better not,” he says thoughtfully. “Kinetic blow back could damage the core and I’m not ready to be reunited with my abuela quite yet.”

“I can make a drop,” Ina says, but there’s a hesitant quality to her tone.

“Hold position,” James instructs. “Nadia?”

“High-low?”

“That’s the one.”

There’s a certain joy in being able to move as one unit with his team. James has got Ryan at his back, Nadia by his side, Ina braced above them like the prettiest hunting hawk, and Lance, their eyes in the sky. The set up feels perfect, like the first crisp breath of winter. He really should have known things were going to go tits up from that feeling alone.

The engineer is broader than James had expected. Nadia’s preferred method of grabbing an arm to boost herself up and over her opponent’s shoulder to wrap strong thighs around their throat and drag them to the ground to snap their neck doesn’t quite work. James hits the man twice, hard, straight to the kidneys before going low to strike the knee. He’s rewarded with a short, sharp howl of pain. Nadia rides the engineer’s shoulders, punching him in the face with vicious little rabbit strikes to the eyes. The man drops, hands covering his face, and Nadia rolls free as James moves in to stomp the thin bone of the man’s clavicle and grins to hear the particular crinkle-crack of a shattering bone. 

Nadia rolls back on top of him, knees digging into the newly shattered bone, savage smile an inch from the man’s face. Blood from her head wound slides down her temple and drips onto his face. “Hello,” she says, voice sweet like sugar. “I have had a very bad day, and I think it is your fault.”

The engineer whimpers softly.

Nadia leans back and considers him. “This is generally the part,” she says conversationally, “where we ask you dramatic questions and you lie until you figure out how to remotely denotate what every nasty little toy you’ve got tucked away. Assuming that this is an action movie and we are the dumb action heroes.”

James puts the blunt nose of a Chehkov shotgun to the man’s forehead and gives him a gentle smile. He’s aware it’s more a vicious smirk, but he does try for reassuring. “This, however,” he tells the engineer, “real life and we are not heroes.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” the man says—sputters so fast the words blend into each other. “You need me.”

“Debatable,” Nadia replies.

“I know who set you up,” he says, desperate.

“Admiral Donnal Udina,” James tells him and watches a dawning hopelessness spread over the man’s face. “He wasn’t as subtle as the thought he was. Left a paper trail.”

“Jamie _likes_ paperwork,” Nadia sighs, with tone caught between amusement and scorn.

“It is the only reason you keep me around,” James tells her. His hand doesn’t waver from where he’s got the shotgun trained. It’d be messy, if he has to fire, spraying the floor and part of the reactor with brain matter and skull fragments. He really hopes he doesn’t have to.

The man nods slowly, seemingly heedless of how it presses his forehead against James’ gun, which is worrying. His enemy rolls dark, desperate eyes up at him—the eyes of a man who has decided that there is only one path left to walk. “They did say,” the man tells him with an odd little smile, “that you are a cold one.”

Three things happen in very tight succession: first, the engineer bites down hard on his back molar. James can hear the crack of a tooth as the man starts to convulse. Second, the faint whirring of the tachyon reactor system going into over drive starts, and third: Ryan shouts a wordless alarm.

Nadia grabs James as he stands blinking in dumb confusion as a trooper—one of the ones Nadia’d gutted but apparently hadn’t quite bled out yet—leans out over the upper level staircase landing holding a sunspear particle rifle—damned thing nearly as long as the trooper is tall, midsection bulging around a miniature arc-reactor that crackled with red and gold light—and points its long, tapered barrel straight at the blue-white light of the tachyon reactor.

He and Nadia are moving before his body really registers what’s happening. There’s no way that they can reach the trooper in time—not a chance in hell—and he can barely hear the sunspear’s wind-up scream over his thundering heartbeat. He thinks, briefly, that time should dilate, spin down to this moment in time in cinematic slow motion. But it doesn’t. He feels obscurely cheated.

There’s a soft pop in the darkness followed by louder, harsher crack and the trooper’s skull explodes backwards across the wall behind him. 

James skids to a stop as the body crumples slowly—breathing hard, adrenaline all over the place—and looks behind him. Ryan kneels with his rifle snug against his shoulder, face blank. Above him in a dim alcove flanked by Ina, Lance sits with his FN-FNAR braced against some rubble and his good leg. He slowly looks up and then down at James before giving him a little shrug.

“The sunspear!” Ina yelps, “get it away from the core!”

There’s a heavy thunking sound as the particle rifle falls to the ground below, energy arcing off it in long sputtering streamers. The sound it makes as it rolls towards the tachyon reactor is a high, undulating shriek like the sound of high winds through fields of wind turbines. The sound drives diamond blades of pain straight through his temples and he hears Nadia make a low animal sound of agony.

“Leifs,” he shouts as he runs for the sunspear. “Start the core drop sequence!”

He doesn’t wait to see if she listens, just charges over the debris of crumbled concrete and shattered marble. The sunspear feels huge, impossibly heavy in his hands. Holding it turns him into a live wire as the energies from the tachyon reactor and the sunspear’s miniature arc-reactor collide, using his body as a grounding force. It makes him shake, fine tremors through his limbs, and he can’t move—paralyzed by the forces shaking his body apart at the molecular level.

Nadia and Ryan hit him simultaneously, their combined force lifting him from where his feet had been cemented to the floor, and drag him up and behind a shattered support pillar. He keeps a tight grip on the sunspear, he’s not sure he could let go even if he wanted too. The force of the energy waves pulsing through the miniature arc-reactor shake him until his teeth feel like they will rattle from his skull.

Ryan drags him to the floor yanking the sunspear from his grasp as they tumble. Nadia kicks it to the far side of the cavernous room and it spits sparks of energy as it flies. She grabs Ryan’s shoulder and hauls him upward with a gasping groan.

“Up,” she says, “up, up, up, we need cover.”

Ryan sighs against James’ hair, tucks him up against his side, and half runs, half drags him to the far wall. Nadia slides down the wall next to them and they huddle together like children hiding from a monster. The tremors chasing up James’ spine rattle through them like a train on deteriorating tracks. Nadia fits herself to James’ back as Ryan curls them protectively between the wall and the crumpled support pillar. James breathes in the smell of gun oil and chemical sterility of tactical armor, face hidden against the crook of Ryan’s neck. 

The sunspear lays dormant, spent, no longer sputtering with angry red-gold arcs of unfettered energy, finally far enough from the tachyon reactor’s mass effect field that the particle reactions have stopped. But the reactor still sings with unspent energy—the hoard Cherenkov radiation generated by the excitement of the tachyon particles thrumming through mass effect field, a rising wave with only one shore to crash upon.

“Leifs,” James mumbles. “ _Leifs._ ”

The reactor shudders, groaning in its bonds like wounded beast, and Ina says, calm as still water, “Done. Brace.”

The groaning turns into an unholy shriek of metal on metal wrapped around a mass effect field that shouldn’t, according to physics before Altean alchemy got ahold of it, be possible. The entire racket is the worst thing that James has ever been forced to listen to—and he’s had to watch Kogane try to lie to the press. Nadia tucks herself tighter against him, holding him still as the last of the tremors from grabbing an imploding arc-reactor rocks through him. Ryan shifts until he has James and Nadia half pinned underneath him, the weight of him pressing them into the floor, smothering James’ trembling. The entire room shakes with the force of the reactor coming unhinged from its main casing, the assemblage unscrewing in loud, whining screeches of metal that drag at James’ eardrums with clawed fingers.

Over Ryan’s shoulder and above the destruction of the reactor control room he can see Ina’s slim figure lit by the strange light of the falling reactor as she slings herself at Lance, hauling him bodily backwards into the darkness of Lance’s little sniper nest.

For a moment the entire cavern of the reactor core is painted with weird light and stranger shadows. Energy funnels up from the reservoir below, the floor rolling in long sinuous waves that makes James something close to seasick—nausea beating in time with the pulsing light. The ceiling cracks alarmingly as energy surges across the walls, licks its way up the remaining support struts, concrete and amino silicate resin hang suspended by the expanding mass effect field and James wonders if they were too late. If all his detailed planning had crumpled upon first contact and under the weight of expectation.

Then the electromagnetic shielding of the reservoir kicks in with a tangible _whump_ of power and he feels it rock him like a defilbrator to the chest.

Then he sees nothing at all.


	9. dirt nap

what ails you @jaundicedview  
what the fuck was that? #phaltcityattacks #earthquake? #justwhatwefuckingneed

Dizmit Rha @verylittlegravitas  
@jaundicedview I felt it too, but we aren’t on any fault lines. #phaltcityattacks

stressed & repressed @inneedofcoffee  
@jaundicedview @verylittlegravitas @explorersam isn’t there an experimental reactor of some kind under the Terminus? #theGarrison #phaltcityattacks #nowdowefreakout?

what ails you @jaundicedview  
@inneedofcoffee now that’s not worrying at all /sarcasm

Sam Holt @explorersam  
@inneedofcoffee there are multiple safety protocols and redundancies in place that automatically activate to protect the reactor (1/4)

Sam Holt @explorersam  
@inneedofcoffee what we just felt was one of those protocols activating to protect main core and terminate the generation of the mass effect fields (2/4)

Sam Holt @explorersam  
@inneedofcoffee we have a main response team on the ground and Voltron has just arrived to support that team (3/4)

what ails you @jaundicedview  
@explorersam I understood maybe a third of that, but I’m reassured anyway.

Verity @useofpsychology  
@explorersam YAY VOLTRON

what ails you @jaundicedview  
@useofpsychology girl. find your shift key.

Verity @useofpsychology  
@jaundicedview NO

* * *

##### IMMEDIATE RELEASE Release No: NR-203-1432 August 12, 2XXX Phalt City Attacks

The protocols to protect main core reactor and terminate the generation of the mass effect fields have been activated for the Joint Chiefs’ of Staff compound (the ‘Terminus’). All civilian and non-essential personnel are ordered to evacuate to designated safe distances from the reactor site. The UEMS SFTC Arizona Garrison command has initiated procedures under FM 100-30.

* * *

##### On the Generation of Mass-Effect Fields and Newton’s Third Law of Physics: A Recursive Analysis

Slav  
Voltron Alliance Department of Applied Physics and Analysis  
Prepared for Joint-Chiefs’ Conference

DRAFT COPY: NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION I MEAN YOU MATTHEW HOLT  
(do not argue with me about presumption of innocence, in 93.584% of all realities you leak this paper to the remnants of the MTI department of physics to settle a bet. Do not do this. It will greatly annoy me.)

A ‘mass effect field’ is the resulting volume of space time that is affected by the charged dispersion of tachyon elements excited via the application of Altean alchemical conversion of momentum into time thus rendering the tachyon particle available for manipulation. In this paper I seek to explain the process by which a mass effect field is manipulated by the electro-magnetic forces resulting in the stable conversion of Cherenkov radiation into a renewable power source. This paper will also explain in excruciating detail why arc-reactors, miniature or otherwise, should never be brought into contact with a tachyon reactor.

 **Keywords:** mass effect field, tachyon particles, altean alchemy, alchemical conversion principles, earth physics, and why they are limited, its like explaining music to people who only know percussion, and I am greatly frustrated

* * *

Keith stares at the ruins of the Terminus, which don’t even have the good grace to smoke dramatically, as if it they might release their captives if he just glares at them hard enough. The ruins, naturally, remain still and quiet—not a single sign of life among the shattered concrete and jutting steel support struts that arch up to the sky like broken ribs from a corpse’s chest.

He directs Red to a bit of crumbling wall, the remains of grav-lift shaft, and she takes it in her mouth to tug at it gently.

“Don’t touch that,” Pidge snaps. Red lets go as if burned, the feeling of frustration, worry, and the pressing need to _do_ something runs from her to him like an electrical current. One of her paladins lies trapped in the dark and the silence—his presence worryingly still within the bond—and the knowledge eats at them both. 

Pidge’s screen pops up in Red’s cockpit. She doesn’t exactly glare at him, but her expression is a tense sort of flat. “This entire thing is like a bunch of balancing blocks that’ll tumble if we look at it wrong,” she says. “We can’t afford to touch anything until we know where they are.”

“Do we even know they are still alive?” Keith asks and hates himself for the question, but it needs to be said. There’s a burst of fury through the lion bond that wraps hot fingers around his vocal cords and squeezes until he chokes. Keith breathes against the feeling of Allura’s rage before continuing: “Because if they aren’t—”

“I have life signs,” Pidge interrupts—her voice as cold as an ice field, whatever she feels about the situation locked behind the fortress of her mind. “Five, about a quarter-mile down.”

There’s a tremor of frustrated worry that radiates out through the lion bond at that and Keith can’t tell who it originates from—himself or Shiro. The permanent sense of anxiety that gnaws at him through the bond he knows is Hunk. It’s a force that drives them all to think faster, react faster, pressing against them the insistent need to _move move move_. Allura is a churning tempest of rage where she sits within the center of the lion bond. Where she normally flows between them as cool and remote as a mountain stream, she’s a whirlwind, a wraith storm on winter seas inside the bond that none of them know how to navigate.

She is also deathly, worryingly quiet.

“Allura,” Shiro says, soft and hesitant, “if you co—”

The Blue Lion roars once, cutting off Shiro and a sonic scan of the ruins of the Terminus pops up on a screen to Keith’s left. Allura’s comms remain silent.

“Thank you,” Shiro says into the stunned silence. 

Keith scowls at the sonic scan. The building is a labyrinth of collapsed floors, burst water veins, and malfunctioning electromagnetic shielding screwing with their attempts to locate Lance and the MFE-team. Even the Blue Lion’s sonic scan becomes a mess of confused of misdirected signals that renders the entire thing useless. All their attempts to raise Lance on comms meet with a shrieking wail of static that peters into silence for lingering seconds before building into screech electric noise made eerie and strange by Doppler effect that makes Pidge purse her lips in offended confusion.

He blows out a frustrated breath. Short of using their lions to literally dig their way down to where Lance and the MFE team _might_ be there is nothing they can do. And they don’t even know where to start digging. 

Shiro’s voice crackles over the comms: “Matt, repeat that.”

“Channel secure?” Matt asks—there’s an odd flat quality to Matt’s voice that Keith doesn’t think he’s ever heard before. “I’m not going to risk this because of your obsessive need for consensus, Shirogane.”

 _Angry_ , Keith realizes with a jolt, this is what Matt sounds like when he’s hit that edge of murderous they all ride during combat. The epiphany isn’t a pleasant one.

“It’s the closed-circuit communications network of Voltron,” Pidge answers while Shiro’s irritation flashes through all of them like an electrical current. “It’s tied to our neural architecture,” she continues as if she can’t feel the impatience building along the bond—thrumming and omnidirectional, no fixed origin, “if someone can hack this then they can hack our brains and honestly that’s terrifying idea for later.”

Matt grunts and there’s a beat of silence before he continues, quieter, “command is a fucking shitshow over here,” he reports, “Udina showed up and got into screaming match with Iverson first thing, tried to take over the entire rescue and retrieval mission.”

It’s Hunk, surprisingly, that audibly growls at that, but the feeling of _fuck no_ radiates out from all of them. 

The unholy drumbeat of Allura’s rage hits a new crescendo that wraps bands of steal around Keith’s ribs and ratchets down until he can barely breathe through the fury. He’d thought he’d known all the possible gradients of anger—had felt it in full home cinema experience with Dolby 2.0—but Allura’s terrified, homicidal fury introduces him to an entirely new depth and degree of the emotion. 

He’s not sure he appreciates the education.

“Voltron doesn’t answer to the UEMS chain of command,” Shiro says with a placid calm that Keith knows for a fact that he doesn’t feel. “Udina can give whatever orders he likes. We are no longer listening.”

“Spare me the posturing,” Matt says dryly. “There’s enough of it going on here. Besides no one is listening to Udina—but you need to know what you’re up against.”

There’s a long thoughtful pause as they all process that for a moment.

“So,” Allura says slowly—it’s the first thing she’s said since they’d reached Earth’s atmosphere and her gentle, calm tone raises the hair on the back of his neck as something primordial in the base of his brain whispers _run run that’s a predator run_ at her considering tone. “James’ plan has been successful.”

“To give the boy some credit,” Matt replies and Keith gets the impression that Matt is a touch impressed, “when he goes fishing, he catches the ancient granddaddy lurking in the bottom of the pond.”

“Anyone else thinking we should just purge everyone from rear-admiral up from the CoC?” Pidge asks, her voice an echo of Matt’s desert-dryness. “Between Sanda and now this, I say burn them all.”

“Agreed,” Allura says and Keith is certain he’s not the only one who shivers at the threat riding her voice. Pidge might have been darkly joking, but Allura absolutely is not. Her desire to feel Udina’s throat between her hands is a tangible thing within the bond.

“Plans for later,” Matt says, but his tone suggests he’d be more than happy to help with the drafting of those plans, “right now you guys need to get James and his team out of there before Udina can finish the job. Or delay extraction to the point that the Cherenkov radiation or lack of oxygen do it for him.”

“How do you know there’s Cherenkov radiation down there,” Hunk asks.

“Probably,” Griffin says dryly, like he’s been waiting for the perfect moment to cut in, and the bastard probably had been, “because I’d told him.”

“Lieutenant,” Allura hisses—Keith can feel the flustered confusion of her emotions, the frantic back and forth between frustration, fury and joy, “what did I say about breaking him when you borrow him?”

“Offer to come supervise still stands, Princess,” Griffin answers in that same dry tone. 

Allura makes a sound like she’s considering it, like she _might_ , and Keith doesn’t know what to do with that knowledge.

“Lieutenant Griffin,” Shiro cuts in as if he weren’t feeling the same confused surprise at the exchange, “what is your status? We have steady life signs from you and your team, but we can’t get a lock on your signal.”

Griffin makes a small sound, an oddly pained grunt, and sighs, “that would probably be the electromagnetic shielding from the reservoir interfering. Leifsdottir had to drop the tachyon reactor. It brought the rest of the Terminus down around our ears and the residual energies from the dispersing of the mass effect field has fried literally everything down here. The only reason we can talk is thanks to the Holt wonder twins’ newest toy. Thank you for that, Katie, by the way.”

Keith finds himself grinding his teeth at Pidge’s sudden burst of proud pleasure at the compliment.

“I’m _older_ , asshole,” Matt gripes at Griffin. “We’re not twins.”

“She’s also smarter than you,” Griffin says completely unperturbed by Matt’s grumbling. “And I’m going to point out that I’m slowly dying down here, but no rush. You take your time griping about petty bullshit. That does seem to be the modus operandi of you bigshot defender of the universe types. Whine about petty bullshit while a traitor slinks around in our midst undercutting everything we do, but hey that’s not the pretty photoshoot. Oh shit, please tell me you have at least gotten one pretty photoshoot out of all this bullshit. Because I did sort of organize it for you to come in as the big heroes of the day and I’m going to be really fucking annoyed if Kogane fucked that up because he couldn’t read a clue even if it was done up in flashing neon lights twenty feet high.”

Keith doesn’t even get a chance to be irritated before an exhausted sort of tidal wave of frustrated affection rises in the lion bond and swamps him.

“Lieutenant,” Allura says with stern gentleness.

“Princess,” Griffin replies in a tone made of sunshine and puppies.

“Shut up,” Allura says. “Pointless rants later, focus on surviving now.”

“Yes, Princess,” Griffin says and then does precisely that to Keith’s immense surprise. 

There’s a long beat of silence. Keith has no idea how to process what the other paladins feel—the bond is a mess of emotions ranging from a fierce, nearly tangible joy radiating off of Allura as she revels in the fact that Griffin is _alive_ to Hunk’s constant, omnidirectional anxiety that only seems to intensify with every word exchanged between Allura and Griffin, to the faintest echoes of Pidge’s tangled mess of pride, anger and worry, and then, under all of it, a frustrated sort of confusion within the bond that Keith can’t distinguish from his own bafflement and Shiro’s creeping sense that he’s missing something—and he drowns under the seething tide.

Allura huffs out a sigh after the silence continues until it turns awkward and fetid. “Lieutenant, you still haven’t given us a sitrep.”

“Oh,” Griffin says after a moment. “I am an idiot. _Oustanding_. Uh, well. I’m not dead. Ryan’s not dead and Nadia isn’t dead. But they are unconscious and I’m kinda … pinned under something. Ina and Lance are in the sniper’s nest behind the main reactor control platform. I think they are alive because they are both impossibly difficult to kill but I haven’t been able to raise them. Actually, I haven’t been able to get any sort of signal out because I am almost certain the residual energies from the mass effect field collapse has saturated the reactor chamber wit—” 

“Jesus, Griffin,” Keith snaps before he realizes he’s even opened his mouth. “Have you ever heard of being concise?”

“I was in the middle of giving a complete report,” Griffin answers snippily, “not that you would know what a complete report looks like given the fact that you have never read or, apparently, written one in your entire life.”

“Lieutenant,” Shiro says as Keith’s vision hazes faintly red, effectively cutting off any rejoinder that Keith might’ve given. “Are you injured?”

There’s another beat of silence and Keith shivers with the way the entire lion bond goes quiet with anticipation.

“Define ‘injured’, sir,” Griffin says with a distinctly shifty tone.

“Griffin,” Keith growls, he’s not even really surprised that Griffin manages to be a difficult bastard while trapped under several tons of debris and apparently slowly suffocating, but the frustration is overwhelming. He feels like it bleeds out of his pores like steam. 

Griffin has the audacity to _laugh_. “Concussion, unspecified head trauma,” he says, voice slipping into that steady cadence that drives Keith up a wall during Morning Report—calm and cool like nothing ever touches him. “Broken ribs, but those were busted before this, dislocated knee, dislocated shoulder—but I got that back in joint a while ago, and I took a really impressive jolt when I grabbed the sunspear when its arc-reactor started to implode.”

“You _grabbed_ a sunspear particle rifle,” Matt says with disbelief thick in his tone, “when it’s arc-reactor started to malfunction. Do you _want_ to die?”

“Is this one of those rhetorical questions?” Griffin asks.

“Gods dammit, James,” Matt snarls.

“It was either grab the damned rifle,” Griffin says with a sort of exhausted fatalism, “or let the entire city sink thanks to the implosion of the reactor’s mass effect field and the resulting shockwave. But hey, I guess next time I let the city sink. Noted.”

Keith stares blankly at Red’s controls, at a loss for any sensible way to respond to the complete idiocy apparently dripping from Griffin’s mouth. “What the fuck,” he says after his brain reassembles the pieces of puzzle into something that makes something approaching sense, “were you doing?”

“I’m guessing you don’t mean that in an existential sense,” Griffin responds. “Because really what are any of us doing?”

“James,” Allura says, and it’s a familiar tone—the one she takes with Lance when he’s off on one of his rambling tangents.

“Hey,” Griffin says, pleased, “you used my actual name. That’s a first.”

Pidge makes a sound stuck between a tongue click and thoughtful hum. “James are you currently bleeding?”

“Yes,” Griffin replies instantly.

Pidge makes that little noise again. “Are you experiencing double vision?”

“Are you asking me if how many fingers I see?” Griffin asks, clearly amused. The silence stretches out and Keith can feel Pidge’s undercurrent of frustrated affection. He’s not sure he’s _ever_ felt her emotions in the lion bond, she hoards her emotions like miser, and he wonders a little at change. Griffin makes a little noise, breathless and pained. “Too dark to tell,” he admits at a moment. “But I did say I have a concussion. If you are trying to figure out how much time we have left down here, I’ll tell you right now the answer is not much.”

“I’m trying to figure out how reliable your impressions are,” Pidge says tartly.

Griffin makes a considering noise before saying. “I’ve got solid situational awareness, no distortion of perception due to injury or onset of Cherenkov radiation poisoning. Biggest problem is that I’m pinned under something and I can’t see shit.”

Pidge sighs, “outstanding.”

“Look at you be all military,” Griffin coos. 

“And look at you, trying to get the range named after you,” Pidge snaps back.

Griffin laughs until he chokes. Keith can feel the way his confusion hits Shiro’s confusion like the ripples from two different stones—and the feeling rebounds on them both. He chews on the inside of his cheek as he stares at Red’s controls, she flickers in his thoughts like a candle flame, a gentle warmth he can cup between his hands. Even her comfort can’t quite keep back the festering sense that the team is slowly fracturing—Griffin is sinking his claws in and pulling them, piece by piece, away from him.

The panic at that idea, the idea he’s given Griffin a chance put cracks in the team Shiro had entrusted with him, claws its way up his chest. 

Hunk’s screen pops up as Keith fights to breathe through the panic. They stare at each other for a long moment before Hunk makes a face and says, “put your head between your knees and breathe while I count.”

“What?” Keith grinds out.

“You’re having a panic attack,” Hunk says matter-of-factly. “You don’t have to say why, because honestly the entire situation is fucked, so, like, pick a reason, but I know what one feels like.”

Keith wants to argue with him, wants to close the connection and bundle the panic and gnawing sense of failure away into his chest, but Hunk gives him flat expression like he knows exactly what Keith’s thinking. Keith grinds his teeth and grumbles: “I’m fine.”

“Head,” Hunk repeats, “between your knees.”

They stare at each other for a long moment. He’s aware, distantly, of a back and forth between Griffin and the rest of the team-- _his_ team, the one Shiro’d trusted to _him_ —but that seems less important than the serious look in Hunk’s eyes. Keith sticks his head between his knees.

He breathes as Hunk counts, constant as the tide, and the pressure of the lion bond eases. With each count he feels himself drown under the surging, conflicting emotions (intense and demanding in ways they’d never been before) a little less. The bitter feeling that he’s somehow, in some strange way, failed Shiro fades as Hunk’s voice continues to drone on.

Eventually he pulls himself back up and meets Hunk’s eyes. He wants to squirm under that dark, considering gaze. “We’ll get them out,” Hunk says as if Keith can’t feel his anxiety and worry as if it were his own. “We’ll find away.”

Hunk doesn’t say: _I’m here. I’m not going anywhere_ , but Keith hears it anyway. 

He blows out a breath and gives Hunk something approximating a smile. “Thanks,” he says softly. “I, just,” Keith makes a face as Hunk’s eyebrow arches, “thanks.”

“No problem,” Hunk says. “Like I said, you guys are all big heroes and you don’t know how to deal with being scared. I do.”

Keith gives him the same incredulous arched-eyebrow look right back at him, “You’re a hero too, you know that.”

Hunk rubs his nose. “Yeah okay, whatever, but we should probably listen to Matt now. He got Griffin to monologue about his sneaky bullshit and holy shit things are fucked.”

“…Udina has ties the Blue Suns corporation,” Keith hears Matt say, voice full of disgust, as he tunes back into the conversation. “Are you certain about that?”

“You know any other merc companies running around with eezo-powered tac suits or sunspear particle rifles?” Griffin returns—tone sharp with bitterness. “I know what their gear looks like at this point, saw enough of it during the occupation, and we just dealt with two full squads in teched-up battle rattle. What worries me is the fact that they brought a sunspear with them. That’s a heavy anti-armour weapon—you use it crack open tanks and, if sufficiently motivated, take out Galra command vessels. Not go play contact-tag with counter-terrorism forces in chameleon gear.”

Matt sputters out a disbelieving laugh at Griffin’s rant and Hunk catches Keith’s eyes and gives him an impressive eyeroll. Keith bites his lip to keep from laughing at Hunk’s exasperated expression. Something unknots inside his chest as he watches Hunk make faces as Griffin talks. He’s still tense, worried, and feeling battered from the force of Allura’s emotions in the lion bond, but he feels less like the ground will slip out from under him and leave him drifting in the void.

He blows out a slow breath when Hunk mouths numbers at him and unmutes his comms. “Matt,” he says, sounding far more controlled than he feels, “what’s Udina doing now?”

“Getting quiet-yelled at by my dad,” Matt reports instantly. “He’s got the admiral pinned on the ops bridge and is making choppy hand gestures—you know the ones.”

Shiro huffs out a laugh. “So Udina will be distracted for a little while at least.”

“Long enough to get James and his team of idiots out of there,” Pidge says. “I think I’ve figured out roughly where he’s located by cross referencing the original building plan with the sonic scan from Blue—he can’t have managed to screw himself over so badly that I’m more than a few meters off.”

“I am listening you know,” Griffin says—his voice has an odd breathless quality to it, like his lungs don’t work quite right. “You’ll hurt my feelings.”

“Hush,” Allura tells him. “Adults are talking.”

Keith wonders at the way Griffin shuts up, and an odd gnawing sense of unease bubbles through him again. Hunk raises his eyebrows a manner that Keith can only associate with little old ladies sharing gossip, and the guilty tension drains out of him again, leaving only the flat determination to get this problem solved. Find his missing teammate, dig out the MFE-pilots, (explain to Griffin in excruciating detail how he’s going to keep his hands _off_ Keith’s damned team), and bring Udina down. 

Where the problem had seemed like an insurmountable testament to all of Keith’s failures as a leader, it now presented itself as a simple series of steps. Simple may not mean _easy_ , but the situation no longer left him floundering under the weight of all his flaws.

Keith looks at Hunk’s little window and Hunk flashes him a thumbs up, making him smile. The universe and all the weight of the things he has to be no matter how much he hates it seems less like a coffin pressing the life out of him.

( _what are we even doing here?_

 _what we have to._ )

He has an idea and he’s pretty certain everyone will hate it. “What if we don’t save Griffin?”

“Dang, Kogane,” Griffin says, sounding coolly impressed. “I knew you hated me, but I figured you’d at least want your former teammate.”

Allura’s emotions suddenly vanish from the bond like a candle being snuffed out. Keith tries not to read anything into that.

“I mean,” Keith says slowly—he swallows hard against the ice creeping through the bond, a frozen sort of distrust that threatens to shatter the entire thing, “can we make Admiral Udina think James and his team are dead? Matt?”

He feels Hunk’s immediate approval like a balm across bruised flesh, Shiro’s sudden burst of pride, and Pidge’s cool interest. Allura remains absent from the bond, her sudden disconnect as overwhelming as the intensity of her emotions had been before. Keith breathes through the anxiety the hollow place in the lion bond that should hold a Blue paladin produces in him. 

Matt makes a thoughtful sound while Griffin laughs like an asshole.

“We’ll have to produce bodies,” Matt says thoughtfully, “he won’t buy anything else.”

Griffin makes a disagreeing sound. “Not if you convince him that the tachyon reactor triggered a Lorentz four-vector scalar collapse.”

“That would effectively vaporize not just you, but the entire damned reactor,” Matt says. “A scalar field collapse would obliterate everything within that level even through the electromagnetic shielding. “

“We’ve got twenty-five bodies down here not including my team,” Griffin says, “I don’t think he’ll push too far if you give him an answer that removes that little detail for him.”

“Assume a failure achieve azimuthal symmetry at the initiation of the electromagnetic shielding, which would result in a temporary failure to contain the exothermic reactions resulting from mass effect field collapse,” Pidge interjects.

“Not that this devolution into abstract physics isn’t fascinating and all,” Hunk cuts in. “But I don’t think we have time for a nerd war.”

“I am going to note that air is getting a little thin,” Griffin says with a weird sort of calmness even as his breathing has gone short and airy, as if it hurt or there just wasn’t enough air to drag into his lungs. “And that’s not just ‘cause I’ve got a part of a concrete pilon crushing the hell out of me.”

“How mobile are you?” Keith asks. He’s got the edges of a plan now, it’s just a matter of filling in the rest of the pieces. “That particle rifle within reach?”

“Mobile enough,” Griffin says, “I’m not gonna be winning any footraces,” for some reason this admission makes him laugh lightly, “but I can get to the sunspear.”

“Paladin,” Allura says, voice cold as a desert night and twice as bleak, “what exactly is your plan?”

There’s a harshness, a distrust threading through Allura’s tone that makes him want to flinch back, as if he’d brushed his hand against a block of dry ice. Hunk frowns at her icy tone, looking as worried and surprised as Keith feels. He feels like he’s walking on fragile sea ice, one wrong step and he goes crashing through to the dark waters below.

He swallows hard. “Particle rifles have failsafe mechanism to prevent the arc-reactor from overheating, but you can bypass that to create a plasma blast that’ll basically vaporize literally anything around it.”

“I do hope, Paladin,” Allura says in that same icy tone, and Keith wishes he could feel her emotions in the bond, but she keeps herself isolated, locked down, “that you aren’t suggesting that James use the particle rifle to trigger a plasma blast in an already unstable location.”

“Actually,” Keith says carefully, “yeah, I am.”

Allura says nothing, the bond carries none of her emotions, but he can feel her judgement in the silence that follows that statement.

“You know,” Griffin says with faux-thoughtfulness, “I put a lot of effort into ensuring that the sunspear _didn’t_ completely meltdown and wipe out the reactor core with a catastrophic plasma blast. Want to explain why I should undo all my good work?”

“You’re buried about a quarter mile down under more tons of concrete and steel than we can easily count,” Keith spits, suddenly irritated—of course this asshole would cause problems even though he got himself into this mess with no good exit strategy besides ‘call Voltron’ and now that they’re here Griffin is being difficult. “A plasma blast will clear that up.”

“Uh,” Griffin says with a sort of condescending disbelief to his tone that has Keith grinding his teeth. “A plasma blast will _also_ obliterate what’s left of me and my team and while that will indeed make Udina believe we’re dead— _because we will be!_ —it won’t help with your excavation plans—plasma blasts travel in a horizontal wave, hotshot, not a vertical funnel.”

“But they can be directed,” Keith says watching Hunk through their little comms. Hunk makes a face at him. “Can’t they?” He asks again, and Hunk rubs the back of his neck like he’s thinking about it. “Hunk?

“In theory,” Hunk replies slowly, but Keith knows that tone. It’s the thoughtful tone Hunk takes right before he does whatever feat of engineering he’s been arguing is impossible for the twenty minutes prior to him actually doing it. “If Griffin can pull apart the arc-reactor’s casing and then change the flow of—,” Hunk’s voice peters out. He glares at Keith for a long moment and sighs. “Griffin, how good are you at following directions?”

“Better than Kogane,” Griffin responds instantly. Keith rolls his eyes and watches as Hunk hides a smile behind his hand.

“Okay,” Hunk says. Keith settles back to wait. If they can get a path cleared to Griffin and his team, then they can figure out everything else, but this is step one. “Can you get to the particle rifle.”

Griffin swears, low and filthy, and there’s the sound something tearing over the comms. Keith’s heart seizes for reasons that are both baffling and embarrassing when Griffin’s breath hitches wetly and his swearing cuts off. 

“James!” Allura and Pidge don’t quite yell, their voices layering over each other, high to low.

“It’s fine,” Griffin says, an airy pant the comms barely register. “I’m fine. Ow.”

“That reaction does not fill me with confidence, Lieutenant,” Allura says and Griffin laughs.

“Aw,” he says at a near gasp and touch delirious, “I don’t get the first name treatment anymore. I’m hurt.”

Allura makes a sound caught between a laugh and a sob, and says thickly, “ _James_ , focus, please.”

“Ma’am, yes ma’am,” Griffin says and Keith can _hear_ his smug grin, that asshole. “Just, uh, give me a second. And maybe don’t listen to the next little bit?”

This time Pidge hiccups out a terrified little noise and breathes, “ _James_.”

“Yeah,” Griffin says, “not you either.”

Keith knows neither of them stop listening—he can feel their desperate, terrified worry even through the barriers they throw up around themselves at every pained noise that burbles up from Griffin’s comms—and he can’t blame them. It feels weirdly voyeuristic to listen to Griffin softly groan, pained and breathless, and pant across the shared comms. It drags on for an age, for an eternity, and Keith can imagine how each meter Griffin gains feels like a mile—feels like a million. He catches himself making some sort of pained face at Hunk who echoes it back at him. Griffin might make his blood boil and his vision haze red with rage but listening to him pant breathless with pain is a new type of torture Keith wished he’d never been introduced to.

Eventually Griffin grunts and goes still.

“Lieutenant Griffin,” Shiro asks, voice impossibly gentle. “What’s your situation?”

“Still fucked,” Griffin says, wheezing but oddly smug. “But I have the sunspear.”

Keith feels Shiro’s wry relief like his own—he’s caught between wanting to hold Griffin’s head beneath water until the bubbles stop and … something less violent that he doesn’t really want to think about too closely—and he breathes out in sync with Shiro’s controlled exhale. He glances at Hunk through the little comms window. Hunk puffs up his cheeks, looking for a ridiculous moment like a chipmunk, and then blows all the air out in one hard breath.

“Okay,” Hunk says, and Keith’s impressed at how his voice doesn’t shake at all. “Is the arc-reactor core still intact?”

There’s a long pause and Griffin swearing about moonbeams, before his voice crackles over the comms, “seems to be, at least it’s not shocking the shit out of me at the moment.”

“I still can’t believe you just _grabbed_ a malfunctioning sunspear,” Matt gripes. “Is that what they teach you lot in commando school these days? Also, whatever you guy are going to do, I suggest you do it faster. Dad’s losing the fight to keep Udina distracted.”

Shiro makes a frustrated sound that’s almost a growl, “Matt, can you further delay him?”

“I’m guessing you don’t mean use my charming wit to distract him,” Matt says dryly.

“Don’t shoot the Admiral,” Griffin breaks in. “That would undo all my hard work and send his allies to ground.”

Hunk makes a frustrated noise, something deep in the back of his throat, clearly annoyed at the interruption, “Shiro, you and Matt figure out what you want to do with Udina on another channel,” he directs and Keith rubs at his mouth to hide his grin at the surprise that spikes from Shiro, “this is delicate work and if Griffin gets it wrong then entire city will sink.”

“Yeah,” Griffin drawls, “let’s not do that.”

“Are your hands steady?” Hunk demands, “if you make a mistake—”

“—then boom,” Griffin finishes, “trust me, I get it. And they are steady enough.”

“Okay,” Hunk says, like he’s coming to a decision he doesn’t like but can’t see a way around, “okay, here’s what you do.”

Keith considers, briefly, dropping into the closed channel that Shiro’s got open with Matt—but subtle social subterfuge is not in his skillset despite his time with the Blades. Hunk makes a face at him like he can sense Keith’s thought process, and it strikes him suddenly that Hunk probably _can_ , just as he can feel the other paladins through the lion bond, as ephemeral and fleeting as those emotions can be, just so can they can feel him. It’s an unsettling thought. 

“I really hope you aren’t going to tell me to connect the white wire to the blue wire or something,” Griffin says, his voice still airy and wavering.

“Why?” Hunk asks, his anxiety spiking across the bond. “Are you colour blind?”

“No, but it’s dark as fuck down here and if you want me to distinguish paint swatches and play interior designer, we’re going to have a problem,” Griffin replies with a sort of lazy nonchalance that Keith finds baffling, given the circumstances.

There’s something in Griffin’s flippant tone, in the way he turns the situation—traitor hidden in UEMS high command, domestic terrorists with home-concocted explosives, and high-tech mercenaries—into just another annoying thing the universe has foisted off onto his shoulders sets Keith’s teeth on edge. The way the asshole goes and plays God, and then has the sheer audacity to act annoyed at the consequences makes Keith want to throttle him. None of them would be in this position if Griffin had just communicated like a fucking adult.

When he says this Griffin laughs long and loud, braying like a donkey until his lungs seize in protest and he coughs pathetically into the comms.

“Shut up,” Keith snarls at him, ignoring the way Allura’s over-protective anger nips at him, frustration and helplessness swirl within him like twin snakes full of venom. “Just do what Hunk tells you.”

“Like you just docilely do what people tell you to,” Griffin snaps, bubbling irritation rising to meet Keith’s own frustration, “because you are so obedient. And I’m sorry if the implausible irony of _you_ , of all people, accusing _me_ of not communicating like an adult is perhaps the funniest thing anyone has said to me this entire year.”

Keith can feel his entire face twitch with irritation at that—a full facial spasm of concentrated frustration. 

“As hilarious as this game of Who’s on First is to listen to,” Pidge cuts in, “we really don’t have time for the Abbot and Costello routine. Hunk?”

“Pry the casing open, Griffin,” Hunk sighs, “without the backtalk please.”

“It’s like you don’t even know me,” Griffin says with a soft grunt. Keith can hear the metallic little ‘ting’ of the casing slipping free. “Okay, that’s an alarming sight,” he comments with the same blithe tone as if he spent every other Tuesday playing with the insides of unstable weaponry, “I’m guessing you want me to tinker with the electron capture for the Pd-103 ions? Ideally in a way that won’t blow me the fuck up?”

“You’re going to change the electron/photon counterflow to create an overflow of electrons relative proton in the core,” Hunk says. “That’ll create an energy funnel for the plasma to move through.”

“Yeah, okay, problem with that,” Griffin grunts, “the ejection of electrons towards the core of the arc-reactor will create a voltage that will fry my ass.”

Keith tries to keep his eyes from glazing over as Hunk rattles off instructions in increasingly sharp tone, but once Griffin starts bitching about the toxicity of palladium decay-product—a thing he’s almost 100% certain Griffin is making up for the sake of being difficult—he checks out of the conversation entirely in favor attempting to make sense of the scans of the Terminus ruins. 

The composite map developed by Pidge manages to make sense of the majority of the ruins, but the farther down the map gets the more it turns into a disastrous mess of conflicting data. Keith shifts the map to a residual thermal imagining scan and makes a face. Even that image only gives gross approximations of where the MFE team (and Lance, part of Keith’s brain rebels even now at thinking of Lance as _Griffin’s_ ) might be. Within several meters of the tachyon reactor, he’s pretty certain, but where exactly remains an open question. He shifts the map again and gets an idea. He pops open a communication line before he can let himself question his decision.

“Paladin,” Allura’s greeting is as cool as a glacier-fed tributary, her eyes a lovely shade of ice. “May I help you?”

It’s been a long time since he’s heard that distantly polite tone, he’d thought he’d managed to move past those sheer walls of arctic ice, but apparently not. He can feel the way his chin goes down, the way he leans subtly forward like a bull about to charge, and from the way Allura’s expression flattens even further he knows she sees it.

“Allura,” he says and notes the way something goes tight around the corners of her eyes. “Have you tried doing a dipole sonic image of the Terminus debris?”

That makes her blink, slow and considering. Her expression goes blank and distant, the way they all look when they talk to their lions, and then she smiles at him. It isn’t a pleasant smile. “You may wish to move Red for this.”

Keith can feel Shiro’s sudden burst of confusion as he moves Red out of the range of the dipole sonic wave. Blue’s roar echoes through his bones, and Allura makes a thoughtful little grunt. He doesn’t even get the chance to ask for the scans before the pop up on a separate screen, composite maps following quickly after. Lance’s position isn’t highlighted in neon, but he gets the impression that Allura had thought about it. That she’d _wanted_ to.

“Found them,’ Keith says into the general channel.

“Were we lost?” Griffin asks. “We’re stuck under several tons of debris, as you so helpfully noted before, how did you misplace us?”

“Lieutenant,” Allura says softly, her rebuke the gentlest of things, and Griffin goes quiet. Keith tries not to hate it.

Keith layers the dipole sonic scans over the thermal image and Pidge’s composite map before forwarding it onto Shiro. It takes less than thirty seconds before Shiro’s direct feed pops up in a little screen. Keith doesn’t even blink as Allura’s screen winks out as she cuts the line. He ignores the soft conversation between her and Griffin even as her light, despairing laughter makes things itch below his skin like a toxic rash. Shiro quirks an eyebrow at him.

“Clever,” Shiro says, lightly. “If Hunk can talk Griffin through how to cannibalize the sunspear into something that can vaporize the rubble we can have them out of there in under an hour.”

Keith nods as he fiddles with the images. “We’ll still need to dig them out,” he says softly. “Even with a plasma blast there’ll still be a metric fuck ton of rubble to dig through—and what the plasma doesn’t destroy will be superheated so we’ll have to wait until it cools.” He realizes he’s not actually sure about that and makes a face. “Probably,” he amends. “It’ll probably be superheated.”

“Well,” Shiro says slowly, with the type of faux thoughtfulness that has Keith narrowing his eyes in suspicion—he knows that mild tone, it always precedes something he doesn’t like, “there is a lion capable of icing things down.”

Keith just looks at Shiro until he rubs a hand over his mouth to hide the smile Keith is almost entirely sure is spreading across his face. Hunk snickers quietly and Keith blinks, having somehow completely forgotten that Hunk’d never closed his direct line. 

Hunk flaps a hand at them. “Don’t worry too much about the heat issue,” he says off hand as Griffin makes a snippy comment that Keith doesn’t catch. “The way we’ve shifted the arc-reactor will result in an explosion of strongly-coupled plasma gas that’s been hit with a phase-shifted nitric oxide molecules and then ionized—essentially it’s a super cold blast that will vaporize everything in its path by destabilizing the neutrons rather than disrupting the electron flow.”

“Still going to point out that breaking apart an atom is a bad thing,” Griffin says. “We’ve got several hundred years worth of research that says this is a bad idea.”

“Altean mystical bullshit,” Hunk snaps in reply.

“Alchemical science is not bullshit,” Allura says like she wants to be offended, but has had this conversation too many times to muster the energy.

“The fact that you put alchemy and science together in the same sentence wounds things in my soul,” Pidge says. “ _Wounds_.”

Allura makes a noise in the back of her throat that suggests that any wounds she’s about to inflict will be much less spiritual in nature.

“I think that might be cue to get this party started,” Griffin says lightly, cutting over the low, dangerous sound that rumbles out of Allura and raises the hair along the back of Keith’s neck. He’s not sure he’s ever heard Allura sound quite so feral, and he doesn’t ever want to hear it again. “You might want to move out of range? Not that I actually know what the range is on this fucking thing now that we’ve turned into some sort of localized atomic weapon.”

“It’s not an atomic weapon,” Hunk grunts, sounding as if he’s had this particular argument one too many times inside of too short a time period. “It’s long-range plasma-powe—”

“Lieutenant,” Allura says, her tone somewhere between fond and completely done with Griffin’s shit. “Get that damned rifle on your damned shoulder and fire.”

“Is that an order, Princess?” Griffin asks and Keith can _hear_ the smug grin. “Though I will point out that technically you are not part of my chain of command.”

Allura sighs, long and frustrated, before saying. “Technically,” she says with a sort of put-upon amusement, “you don’t have a chain of command. Also, yes. Fire the damned gun.”

Keith blinks at that statement and shoots Shiro a ‘what the fuck’ expression. Shiro shrugs expressively. 

“All right, team,” Shiro says, as if he isn’t as confused by the exchange as Keith, “let’s get clear and give Lieutenant Griffin some space.”

“I’m just gonna say, in case this thing vaporizes me,” Griffin says seriously, and something knots low in Keith’s stomach at the shift in tone, full of emotions that he doesn’t want to investigate, “that I am going to haunt the ever living _fuck_ out of all of you.”

There’s a collective inhale, Keith can feel it ripple through the lion bond like a sigh, but before any of them can say anything in reply, there’s a faint _click_ over the comms, and for a half moment nothing in the entire universe moves, then a bone-deep angry snarl, like a bear crossed with a bandsaw, proceeds an eruption of silver-blue energy punching up through the ruins of the Terminus up to the sky. For a moment Keith can’t see anything at all, can’t hear anything over the sudden thunder of his blood in his veins, can only sit in dumb animal wonder at the unnatural light that casts everything—the rubble, their lions, the insides of his eyeballs—in glittering silver. 

He can feel them all take a deep breath at the sheer destructive force Griffin has unleashed.

“Okay,” Griffin says into the silence, “that was fun. I think I’m gonna, just, you know, take a nap.”

“Griffin,” Keith says before he realizes what he’s doing, “don’t you fucking dare.”

“Yeah,” Griffin slurs, voice indistinct and ragged, “I don’t take orders from you either.”

In the silence that follows Griffin dropping into obvious unconsciousness there’s a faint feeling of desperate, frustrated protectiveness that ratchets itself tighter and tighter, like a spring being wound until snapping, that sings through the lion bond, bouncing between each of them like a demented ping-pong ball, gaining intensity on each rebound. 

It takes less than thirty seconds of this before Allura swears in Altean—says something that Keith instinctively knows is filthy and violent—and flings herself out of Blue without any apparent care for such trifling forces like gravity or the basic laws of physics. 

“Allura,” Pidge snaps through comms, “don’t you dar—” Pidge cuts off with a deep sigh when Allura, after peering down the gently steaming hole the plasma wave has cut through rubble, jumps into the darkness. “I knew she was going to do that. I swear I did.”

“I don’t know why any of us are surprised when she flings herself out perfectly good vehicles,” Hunk gripes. “She keeps doing it.”

“I’m installing child locks on Blue,” Pidge grumbles.

Keith looks at Shiro who just shrugs at him again. He feels, tentatively, for Allura across the lion bond and gets the impression of door tightly closed and barred, but through the edges of that locked door leaks a desperate sort of terror.

It’s all he needs to motivate himself to popping open Red’s hatch to tumble out onto the lip of the deep chasm into the belly of the Terminus ruins. He can hear Shiro and Hunk shout his name, their voices layering over each other as they tell him to stop, to think, to not do what he knows he’s about to do.

The jump doesn’t look that bad, more like a controlled slide down the rubble burned smooth and smoking from the cold plasma blast. Keith flicks on his helmet’s overhead light and jumps.

“And I knew he was going to do that,” he hears Pidge say with a resigned sigh. It almost makes him grin. 

The slide down threatens to rattle his teeth straight out of his skull and he wonders if Allura used her magic to make her descent more controlled or if she hit the bottom with the same feeling that her brain had been shaken into mush. It takes him a moment for his eyes to adjust, the darkness of the cavern he’s landed in an all-consuming sort of blackness that seems to thrum with left over air tension of the plasma blast.

Soft whispers lead him to where Allura curls over Kinkade’s prone body, his head pillowed on her thighs, his face full of odd shadows between her glowing hands. Griffin sits propped against a shattered support strut, the particle rifle across his lap, his hair a disaster of concrete dust, blood, and sweat matted down against his skull. When Keith jogs over to them he turns his head slowly, like the movement hurts or he can't quite tell where Keith was. The slow movement and the heavy, disoriented expression in Griffin’s eyes make tension coil across Keith’s shoulders.

“What took you, hotshot,” Griffin says, words slurring together. “Normally you’re jack-rabbit quick, like,” Griffin’s hand makes a little fluttering gesture that doesn’t make any sort of sense and looks a little obscene, “this time you wanted to—what?—stop for expresso or something.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, Jamie,” Allura says softly. A bead of sweat rolls down her temple, glittering in the queer light of her magic. Keith wants to say something about how she shouldn’t have taken off her helmet, that they need her on comms, but a feeling of anticipation stills him. Her face is a horrifying mask of terror and concentration, like she expects Kinkade to vanish if she blinks.

“Hey,” Griffin drawls with a grin that still manages to border between charming and arrogant, and Keith jolts at the way his easy, slurring words cut the tension, “you used my name.”

“You’ve managed to scare me,” Allura says, shockingly honest, “I’ll remind you of your proper place later.”

Griffin clicks his tongue and his expression is a more charming version of Lance’s filthy leer, “Di~irty, Princess.”

“Stop that,” Allura says mildly, her hands never wavering from where she rests them on Kinkade’s temples—Keith is uncomfortably reminded of Allura bringing Shiro back from the dead, her hands full of unnatural light—even as her eyebrows furrow into a tight line of concentration, “it’s only cute when Nadia does it.”

“No fair,” Griffin complains. “You’re not supposed to play favorites.”

Allura snorts, the sound harsh and surprisingly unladylike. “Says who? And you know who my favorite is already anyway. Please stop breaking him.”

Griffin flaps a hand at her, Keith notes with an odd sense of surrealness, the way his fingers tremble as if just that simple, dismissive gesture is too much for him. “Offer is still there,” Griffin says, “too come supervise.”

Keith gets the feeling that this is a call and response between them, one that’s so well-known they’d find the words for it when they’ve forgotten every other language. It’s something impossibly sweet between them and it pulls at him—drags from his chest like bile an uncomfortable, bitter feeling of yearning.

Allura uncurls herself from her protective hunch over Kinkade as he blinks dark, dark eyes up at her. She presses her knuckles to Kinkade’s cheek and he tips his head against her hand. It’s a gesture so familiar and soft that Keith has to look away, uncomfortable and off-balance, at the casual intimacy of it. 

“I might do that,” she says as she carefully helps Kinkade slump against Griffin. “If this is the sort of trouble you get yourself into.”

Kinkade makes a soft sound, something caught between an assent and a whine. It takes him a few moments before his voice seems to work properly, lips moving around syllables that don’t quite make it out of his mouth, but Allura and Griffin seem content wait for him. Griffin tips his head against Kinkade’s while Allura rubs the knuckles of Kinkade’s hands gently, her hands still glowingly faintly. The delicate affection of the entire scene makes Keith feel off balance and out of place—like an intruder on a space not meant for him.

“Lance,” Kinkade says eventually, eyes flickering to the far wall, “up,” his fingers flicker for a moment, “up there, with Ina.”

Keith can hear the way Allura’s breath catches at that before she leans forward to press a kiss to Kinkade’s temple. “Rest,” she says softly. “I’ll find them.”

The softness in her expression fades when she looks up at Keith. She stands in one easy movement and gestures to the slumped pair behind her. Griffin waggles his fingers at them. “Watch them,” she orders briskly. “Don’t let them sleep with those head wounds.”

Keith blinks as she walks away from him without a backward glance. Allura stares at the far wall for a moment before scaling up it, hauling herself up into the shadows without any indication of strain, until she’s nothing more than a faint suggestion of movement within the darkness. Keith looks back at Griffin and Kinkade where they lay sprawled against the broken concrete looking like even that is too much for them.

“I’ll, uh,” Keith starts, suddenly at a loss in the face of their exhaustion and injuries, “look for Rizavi?”

“You’ll guard them!” Allura calls out from the darkness, her tone brooking no disobedience.

Griffin makes a sloppy gesture at the cracked and ruined floor. “Pull up some debris,” he says. “Get comfortable.”

“But,” Keith starts.

“Look how he doesn’t love us,” Griffin says to Kinkade, his words a mess of confused vowels and half articulated consonances. “Trying to run off already.”

“It’s ‘cause you’re an asshole,” Kinkade replies with his eyes closed. “Try working on that.”

“Sounds difficult,” Griffin says. “I’d rather not.”

Keith can’t help but stare at them. “Aren’t you worried?”

“Nah,” Griffin answers breezily. “Nadia’s too vicious to die.”

“We’ve got her on comms,” Kinkade says at the same time and taps a tiny communicator on his collar and then an ear piece nearly hidden by his hair. “She’s hurt, pissed as all hell, and swearing.”

“So, situation normal,” Griffin chirps, expression weirdly sunny despite the blood smeared across his face and the way he can’t seem to focus his eyes on Keith’s face. “All fucked up.”

Kinkade sighs as Griffin breaks down into hiccupping giggles. “Ignore him,” he says with exasperated affection. “He gets punchy when he’s got a head wound. And he’s an asshole at the best of times.”

“You love me,” Griffin says between little gasping snatches of laughter that sound both wet and hysterical around the edges. “You know you do.”

“It’s a character flaw,” Kinkade replies. “I’m working on it.”

Griffin sputters for a moment, face full of offense, before he just gives up. Keith can see him cave to the trembling exhaustion and pain as his entire body just seems to deflate. Griffin presses his cheek to Kinkade’s head for a moment and sighs. “Don’t work too hard,” he says. “You need to have some flaws for the rest of us mere mortals.”

There’s something in the casual intimacy, the easy trust between them, that sits uneasily with Keith—like he’s watching something that should be kept behind closed doors. The way Kinkade tips his head onto Griffin’s shoulder and closes his eyes, the way Griffin lets himself go slack against Kinkade, it all seems too delicate to be out in the open. It makes his skin itch with discomfort and odd sense of longing.

“Are you just going to stand there and loom like an awkward jackass,” Griffin says, “or you gonna sit? Or are you too good to sit on the floor, Mr. Black Paladin?”

Keith makes a face and drops into an easy seat next to him. “You don’t even need me here,” he says, trying not to complain. “I could be doing something useful, like helping Allura or digging Rizavi out. You two can keep each other occupied.”

When Griffin starts to grin, sly and delighted, Keith quickly rewinds what he just said and groans. Fortunately, Kinkade reaches up and covers Griffin’s mouth with one hand. “No,” he says quietly. “Behave.”

Keith watches the exchange with a fascination he can’t hide. He has roughly a million questions running through his head. He’s seen the social media posts—Rizavi’s random videos, Lance’s ridiculous selfies, the odd, gently mocking posts from Kinkade, and even Allura’s one and only post—but he’d managed to convince himself it was crafted. Something not quite true, a gloss—fake and shiny—over their actual dynamic, but when Griffin subsides under Kinkade’s hand he’s forced to reevaluate that analysis.

“Head wounds,” Kinkade repeats, eyes still closed as if he can’t find the energy to open them, “they completely remove his filter. Ignore him.”

“I generally do,” Keith says before he can consider his words. He bites his lip when Kinkade laughs and Griffin makes an outraged noise from under Kinkade’s hand.

There’s a long silence that Keith knows he should fill, that he needs to keep them talking an engaged, but it stretches out in front of him like a pool of tar that threatens to drown him in the still darkness. He doesn’t know what he wants to ask even though a thousand questions press against his mouth like bile. He feels caught between confusion as a sort of nameless bitterness—a covetous jealousy that roils under his breast at each easy, careless touch between them—and he doesn’t know how to deal with any of it.

Kinkade’s eyes gleam in what little light trickles from the gaping hole in the Terminus ruins. Tiny motes of concrete dust hang in the air between them, delicate and ephemeral. Keith counts them, one by one, while his mind trips over and discards every bit of small talk he knows. He watches a small trickle of blood seep down Griffin’s temple with something akin to despair. He wishes Shiro would suddenly arrive, full of confidence and command. He wishes Allura would come back with her cool control. Wishes that it’s anyone other than him.

He can hear the scrapping sounds of Allura digging. The sound of debris crashing as she tosses it out of her way, as easily as he might throw a bit of tissue paper. 

“I’m going to dig Rizavi out,” he decides, the stillness and waiting eating at him. 

“What did I say?” Allura yells from where she’s a slim, glowing figure in the darkness. It’s impressively intimidating.

Keith frowns up at her even though he knows she can’t see him. “They’re fine,” he calls back. “I’m just sitting here.”

“Talk to them,” Allura demands as she throws another chunk of debris out of her way. “Keep them awake.”

“He doesn’t love us,” Griffin calls to her, his voice a shaky and unsteady thing in the dark but his half-smirk is still insufferably smug. 

“It’s because you’re an asshole,” Allura answers back, tart and affectionate. “Try working on that.”

Griffin opens up his mouth to complain when Matt skids down the hole cut by the plasma blast followed by his sister. Matt half-jogs, half-stumbles to a stop, momentum carrying him over to them. He scowls down at the pair of MFE pilots and shakes his head. “I thought you did urban combat training?” He says without preamble. “Starting to think you should ask for a tuition refund from commando school if this is what it gets you.”

Griffin and Kinkade present him with matching middle fingers.

Keith tries to swallow the disbelieving laugh that bubbles out of him and Griffin switches to flipping him off instead.

“Not that this isn’t cute and all,” Matt says, “but we need to get a move on. The press has shown up and Shiro’s up there doing his noble leader routine but that’s only gonna hold them for so long.”

Griffin cocks his head to the side and looks up at Matt. His gaze is fuzzy and indistinct, staring somewhere about a foot off from where Matt’s standing. “You got a plan?”

Matt holds up a syringe with a sharp smile. “Yep. You get to play possum for a while.”

Griffin holds up a shaking arm. “Outstanding,” he says. “Hit me.”

* * *

####  FM 100-30

Mass Effect Weaponization Operations 

**Headquarters, United Earth Military Services, Logistics Command**

Field manual Headquarters

FM 100-300 United Earth Military Services

Geneva, Switzerland 29 October 

XXXX

####  Mass Effect Weaponization

**Contents**

**Preface**

Chapter 1: Transition from Joint Mass Effect Doctrine..……………................ 1-1  


The Mass Effect Environment ……………………………………….….......... 1-2  


Levels of Deterrence ……………………………………………………........... 1-3  


The Threat ……………………………………………………………………….... 1-4  


Operational Capacity………………………………………………………......... 1-5  


Rough Order of Magnitude………………………………………………......... 1-6 

_click here to continue_  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter otherwise titled "Area Man Has Feelings About Literally Everything And Processes 0 Of Them."


	10. five sided puzzle palace pt1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this chapter got out of control so I'm breaking it up a little
> 
> also: the first youtube link goes to the music video for "Bad Motherfucker" by Biting Elbows which is violent and weird (Russians) so careful not to click that if seeing violence is not your thing.

Allura sinks slowly onto the bed beside Lance where he lays ashen and drawn, his breath a harsh rasp that sounds echoingly loud in the little room, his skin is cool under her hands as she places them—glowing and shaking—to his temples. Her little audience holds its collective breath as her magic seeps into his skin, particle by particle, mending bone and tissue and neural pathway. There’s a faint susurration of whispers that spring up behind her as Lance’s breathing settles, his face smooths, and the bruising vanishes like frost in the dawn. 

The surprise and disbelief of her fellow paladins’ grates. She’s done far greater than heal some bruising and broken bones before. She’s done far greater for Lance.

She runs her fingers through Lance’s tangled hair, tidying it back into its proper place, before shifting slightly to consider her audience. Hunk stands near the door, fingers twisting themselves into knots, looking like he’d rather be anywhere other than in this little room. Pidge watches her with dispassionate, curious eyes and a blank expression as if Allura were a thing to be pulled apart and studied. Shiro sighs, deep and exhausted, drawing her gaze to him and he gives her a little half smile.

“Allura,” he says gently, so gently as if she were a child to be coaxed, “maybe take a break?”

“I will,” she agrees, her fingers curling around Lance’s slack ones. “Here.”

Shiro’s expression twists in confusion and disapproval. “I think it might be better if—”

“I do not care,” she says carefully, deliberate with each word, “what you think. I am staying here.”

“You healed Lance, James, and Kinkade,” Pidge lists, counting each name on her fingers. “Multiple times. That’s a massive drain on you.”

“I am aware,” Allura says. “And I am staying here.”

“Well,” Hunk says, his voice cracking in his nervousness, “do you want soup or tea or som—”

“There is nothing that I want which you could provide,” Allura interrupts. She is tired. A bone-deep, molecule-deep ache of exhaustion that saps her reason and her patience. 

“Allura,” Shiro starts again, but falls silent when she closes her eyes and sighs.

“Leave me,” she whispers, a soft command in a tone she’s not used since before she first stepped into Blue. A tone she’s not used in years, but it comes back quickly enough. Allura finds them all staring at her with differing expressions of shock. Her lips pull back from her fangs, dainty and gleaming, and she snarls: “ _Leave_.”

Hunk promptly absconds. Turns tail and shuffles out of the room so quickly he jostles Shiro in his haste. Pidge opens her mouth for some smart remark and Allura can’t stop the low sound of warning that rumbles out of her. Pidge blinks, slow and considering, before turning on one heel and marching out, leaving her with Shiro who watches Allura as if he’s never really seen her before. 

“You should sleep,” he says in the same gentle tone as before. She starts to protest, to argue, to rage, and he holds up one hand to forestall her. “Here if you want. Just try.”

There’s a pressure in the room, like the half-felt presence of an eavesdropper, it feels like a child, hidden, watching their parents fight and she sighs—gives in.

“I’ll try,” she agrees softly. “Now. Please leave.”

He goes.

* * *

#### Lieutenant James Griffin and MFE Counter-Terrorism Special Taskforce Reported Missing

As Phalt City struggles to make sense of the recent terrorist attacks that leveled the newly constructed Joint Chiefs’ of Staff Command (nicknamed ‘the Terminus’) witness report that Lieutenant James Griffin and the counter-terrorism rapid response team he led has been reported missing. The United Earth Military Services has not released the identities of the terrorists who launched the attacks targeting the experimental tachyon reactor underneath the Terminus.

[image: _a panoramic shot of the ruins of the Terminus. A dark hole through the middle of the rubble of the building flanked by the Red and Blue Voltron Lions. The scene has an exceptionally somber feel to it._ ]

The UEMS command has not responded to questions regarding the plasma explosion that rattled the city a half hour after the safety and containment protocols for the reactor rocked the city. 

_click here for more_

_This story is breaking and will be updated_

Comments:  
ProudXenophobe commented:

_This comment has been removed by the moderation team!_

^ frankexchangeofviews replied:

here’s an idea, asshole, how about you fuck entirely off?

* * *

**r/Military** * posted by u/irregularapocalypse [UEMS 2x2 Styker Brigade] 12 days ago

[ **Video** ]

#### LT Griffin Clears Urban Combat Training Set To ‘Bad Motherfucker’ Because Nadia Loves Us

[wcn.yougalaxyvid.co/watch?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rgox84KE7iY)

[Video: _the video starts with soft music and LTJG Nadia Rizavi leaning down to fill the frame of a go-pro with her grin bright and sharp and her ponytail falling into her face. She gives the camera a delighted little wave before standing back up. She reaches out to pat the person wearing the go-pro._

_“Have fun!” she chirps._

_“Why?” LT James Griffin sighs rather than asks. Nadia just laughs and skips out of the frame. James sighs again as two cadets file into the room looking nervous and determined. ‘Training Sequence Start’ reads across the screen in time to a robotic voice stating the same. The two cadets lift a pair of automatic rifles fitted with laser infrared sights. Their eyes are very wide._

_The music continues, a soft, melodic harp as James disarms the pair, thumping one in the head with his own rifle and flipping the other through a door. The soft refrains of the song slowly give way to a driving drumbeat as James clears a hallway, then another, before opening a door to an open warehouse full of cadets who pause for a moment before looking up at him and reaching for their weapons._

_‘Bad Motherfucker’ kicks in as James breathes a faint, “fuck.”_ ]  
2.3k Comments Share? +Save >>>

**What are your thoughts? Login or Sign Up** [ _Log In_ ]

sort by BEST ^  
Victorious69 [UEMS 101 Airborne] 233 points * 12 days ago  
Jesus fucking Christ on a hopping po-go stick and people wonder why he got tapped to be the MFE squadron leader. That shit where he kicked that poor asshole out a window and grabbed his gun on the way down is some action movie bullshit.

This crew is not in the vicinity of fucking around.  
\+ Reply Share Report Save

 

^Falcrionts [Cadet] 36 points * 12 days ago  
_do you see this shit?_  
\+ Reply Share Report Save

 

^ JustTesting [UEMS 2x2 Stryker] 23 points * 12 days ago  
I have the most confused boner of my life  
\+ Reply Share Report Save

 

ShootThemLater [Snake Eater] 115 points * 6 hours ago  
Hey OP can we turn this into memorial thread?  
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^DeathandGravity [UEMS airborne] 13 points * 6 hours ago  
a fucking what?  
\+ Reply Share Report Save

* * *

The world comes back in stages: feeling through his fingertips and toes, light across his closed eyelids painting his internal world in reds, and the sound of soft voices. Memory does not come with consciousness and he’s left with vague impressions that he’s somewhere he shouldn’t be. When he tries to move, push away from the bed, his body rebels. Pain sparks along his nerves, seizing along his joints, wringing a soft, unhappy noise from his throat.

“Griffin?” 

The question is soft, softer than that voice has any right to be. He hates the softness of that voice, finds it grating like sandpaper across his skin, but his throat is a desert from which no sound can escape.

“James.”

Callused hands move through his hair as if searching for something and he tries to complain, a broken rasping thing, and he’s hushed gently. There’s a pressure against his wrist, pinning his hand down when he tries to take swing. When he opens his eyes to investigate, the light of the room blinds him. Everything about the situation—pinned, wounded, confused—sends his instincts into a spiral and he tries to resist, but his body is a collection of muscle and bone and useless tissue that refuses to obey.

“Don’t move, asshole,” Kogane growls at him, holding onto his wrist with a mulish expression. “We need to keep you still until Allura can get a look at you.”

He tugs at his wrist, stubborn and frustrated and confused, but Kogane has it locked tight. When he complains, wordless and petulant, Kogane snarls at him silently, lips peeling back from dainty fangs. He wants to push back, but nothing in his body seems to be working correctly. Kogane blows out a breath, a little huff air that puffs up his cheeks like a chipmunk and looks off to the side at something in frustrated helplessness. James follows his gaze and glares at Matt Holt, who gives him a sunny smile.

“Matt,” he rasps, pleased to have gotten the vowels and consonances out of his mouth in the correct order. “What the fuck?”

“Morning, sunshine!” Matt chirps, smile not dropping a watt. “So, when you gave your sitrep to the paladins you somehow neglected to tell them that’d you’d administered a nociceptor blocker to yourself. Naughty! Because when we dosed you with propofol to control the damage you did to literally every part of your neuro-system by grabbing the arc reactor like a fucking suicidal idiot, you sent yourself into a seizure, scaring the fuck out of everyone and making Allura do crazy Altean space witchery to keep your ass alive. I repeat: you suicidal idiot.”

James understands maybe one word in five Matt’s diatribe and decides the only appropriate response is to flip him off and drop right back into unconsciousness.

As the world blurs around him he thinks he feels a calloused hand rake through his hair.

* * *

#### Planetary Day of Mourning Called

Civilian leaders from across the globe have called for a planetary day of mourning in solidarity after the Plath City attacks. While no civilian lives were lost, the entirety of the MFE squadron and Paladin Lance Serrano were killed during the attacks when explosions triggered the safety protocols of the experimental tachyon reactor at the heart of the complex. While experts argue that the safety protocols could only be triggered under certain circumstances with low statistical probabilities, calls that research into Altean energy sources be delayed until better safety and containment protocols can be developed have been made by various investor consortiums.

[image: _An indignant Slav grips a podium with four of his hands while another set make emphatic gestures at a press corps that appear thoroughly cowed by the display. Matthew Holt stands behind him looking like all of his Christmases have arrived early._ ]

While investigations are still ongoing as to how the security of the Terminus was breached and the safety protocols of the experimental reactor triggered, the Garrison states that their commitment to off-world allies remains strong. 

_click here for more_

Comments:

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* * *

roundab00t reblogged from century-confluence:

Resist(A)nce:

[Image: _LTJG Ryan Kinkade and LTJG Lance Serrano square off against LT James Griffin and LTJG Nadia Rizavi on a battered and pocked-marked city basketball court. The hoops have no net, the court’s paint is a distant memory, and behind the MFEs rises the shattered remains of a city. LTJG Ina Leifsdottir’s shadow stretches long and slender between them._ ]

Post your favorite MFE (and Lance Serrano) picture.

*

thecringefactory:

[image: _LTJG Ryan Kinkade sits in a languid sprawl across a broken concrete pylon with a water pack in one hand, stripped down to dust and grime covered pants, a do-rag holding back his hair. LTJG Lance Serrano lies between his legs, slumped across his chest like a puppet with its ties cut, face slack with sleep. In the distance LT James Griffin stands conferring with a Garrison officer in engineer greys._ ]

These two were always Best Friend Goals.

*

badideawrangler:

‘best friends.’ sure.

[image: _LTJG Ina Leifsdottir stands in front of LT James Griffin as if she’s backed him into a corner, caught mid-gesture, her face unusually animated with bright eyes and flushed cheeks. James leans against a wall with his arms cross and a faint, fond smile as he listens._ ]

*

century-confluence:

no ship shit on this. They’re dead. Have some fucking respect.

[image: _LTJG Nadia hangs between Lt James Griffin and LTJG Ryan Kinkade with her arms slung around their necks, grinning so wide it looks fit to split her face in two. James & Ryan are reaching towards LTJG Ina Leifsdotter who considers them with a deeply skeptical expression. They are all in cadet orange with only single stripes adorning their shoulders._]

An old one, but a good one.

*

roundab00t:

[image: _LTJG Nadia Rizavi stands between Lt James Griffin and LTJG Ryan Kinkade with her hands buried in their hair dragging them down to her level. LTJG Lance Serrano leans across Ryan’s back, visibly dragging LTJG Ina Liefsdottir into the shot, who looks very surprised. They are all bedraggled, dirty, and sweat streaked, but grinning from ear to ear and so pleased with themselves._ ]

1,323,533 notes  
Tagged: #defenders of earth, #James Griffin, #Ryan Kinkade, #Nadia Rizavi, #Ina Liefsdottier, #Lance Serrano, #don’t touch me, #i’m emotional

* * *

Allura watches Lance’s chest rise and fall with a fixation she realizes borders on obsessive and cares not one wit. Coran has long since come and retreated, sliding out of the room when she snarled at him—fangs bared and eyes a little wild—when he suggested she leave to sleep, eat, do something other than watch the slow, uneven movement of Lance’s breathing. She keeps a hand on Lance’s slender chest just to feel it move. Every hitch in his breathing, every painful rasp of his lungs, sends her spiraling.

Something moves in the periphery of her vision, a small furtive shiver, and Allura snaps her head around to glare at a white swath of wall holding nothing at all.

Lance moves under her hand, restless under the layer of protective drugs and magic that knit back together his fractured bones and shredded nervous system. She and Lieutenant Griffin are going to have _words_ and none of them are going to be said by him.

Her eyes burn with exhaustion and her mouth is a desert, but she refuses to leave or share her vigil.

A small sound, tiny and desperate, steals her attention from Lance’s ragged breathing. Her name whispered by unsure lips. Allura slows her breathing to almost nothing and listens, patient and still, for that uneven susurration in the form of her name.

Only the background hum of the Atlas’ myriad processes that keep the ship operational fills the silence, like the ship’s own heartbeat set at a steady rhythm to reassure her. Allura tilts her head to the side as if that would help her hear better and then grimaces at herself. Nothing stirs in the little room that holds her and Lance and the quiet hum of Atlas’ monitoring system. Her hand fists in the sheets next to Lance, pulling at them, and he groans in response, still drifting in the grip of strong drugs and strange magic. She sooths a hand across his brow, letting it fill with her magic to gentle his dreams and hasten along his healing.

The room is still and small and nothing moves within it besides her and Lance, but she feels the gentle pressure of watching eyes. It takes her a long moment, longer than she cares to admit, to recognize the culprit. Then she laughs with a wondering sort of chagrin before closing her eyes.

She lets herself drop, weightless and formless, into the void of her own mind and sink past where the lionbond lives in all its technicolour wonder, sinks down into the darkness of her magic. It terrifies her, a little, this endless abyss within her soul that houses a power she still scarce understands.

_Atlas?_ she calls into that starry night of her soul.

_Princess_ , it calls back to her, a soft and wonderous presence.

* * *

Quiz: Which Defender Are You?

##### You Got: Green Paladin Katie “Pidge” Holt

[Image: _Katie “Pidge” Holt sits perched on stool next to her brother holding a microphone loosely in her hands as she watches the interviewer with a skeptical expression stamped across her fine-boned features. She somehow looks very like a dainty hunting hawk waiting for the perfect strike._ ]

You are smart as hell and a little bit cruel with it. You’re driven by curiosity and the deep-seated need to understand. Science is less the pursuit of knowledge, and more a personal crusade to drive ignorance and stupidity squalling back under its rock. You are deeply offended by your own capacity to feel emotion.

Did you know you can sign up for a GalaxyFeed Community account and make your own GalaxyFeed posts? Get started here!

* * *

##### Extended Tachyon Field, Alchemical Particle Conversion, and Solvable ƙ-Essence Cosmologies

Slav  
Matthew Holt  
Phys. Rev. D 231, 23145 – published 3 November XXXX

[Article] [References] [Citing Articles (2142)] [Export Citation]

Abstract

We investigate a flat Smythe-Chernkov-Friedmann spacetime filled with k essence and find the set of functions F that generate three different families of extended tachyon fields with mass effect generation potentiality with the application of Altean particle conversion of electric and magnetic fields. They lead to accelerated and super-accelerated expanding scenarios. For any function F, we find the first integral of the k-field equation when the k field is driven by an inverse square potential or mass effect generated potential. In the former, we obtain the general solution of the coupled Einstein–k-field equations for a linear function F. This model shares the same kinematics of the background geometry with the ordinary scalar field one driven by an exponential potential. However, they are dynamically different. For a constant potential, we introduce a k-field model that exhibits a transition from a power-law phase to a de Sitter stage, inducing a modified Altean thermal exchange.

Received 1 October XXXX

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.231. 23145

* * *

Quiz: Which Defender Are You?

##### You Got: Rebel Leader Matthew Holt

[image: _The picture is of a rare photoshoot of both Holt siblings, a glossy spread detailing their latest technological marvel. Matthew Holt leans against the side of an ornately carved, high backed chair that contains but does not dwarf his baby sister. He meets the camera’s gaze with a sly look and a chin tipped in challenge._ ]

You’re as smart as your darling sister but more inclined to be subtle about it. You keep your cards close to your chest, a trump in your boot, and a little bit of blackmail for a rainy day. Your best friend can be the shining exemplar of every noble ideal because you’ll quietly shank any motherfucker who gets in his way.

Did you know you can sign up for a GalaxyFeed Community account and make your own GalaxyFeed posts? Get started here!

* * *

There’s a particular quality to waking up in a hospital bed that Ryan has more experience with than he’d really like. The momentary dislocation and sense of confused panic that presses in around him is, unfortunately, a familiar process. Ryan lets it flow through him until it passes—a river of unstable emotion and all that is left behind is him and a really impressive headache. Unfortunate.

“Did you just, like, will yourself out of a panic attack?” a voice asks in a nervous cadence. “Because, man, that’s really cool and I wish I could do that because let me tell you I get panic attacks _all the time_ ,” Ryan opens his eyes to find himself in a little white room (expected) filled with bland white furniture (also expected) and one large, jittery Paladin (unexpected), “and if I could just, like, shut them off like that it would be really handy, like, woah, kinds of handy.”

There’s an IV drip snaking under the skin of one hand and nothing between him and the door.

He wraps the tubes of the IV around one hand yanks, represses a shiver at the feeling the tubes slithering out from under his skin, and presses down at the slowly seeping hole. He swings his feet to the ground and tests his balance.

“—woah, hey, uh, I’m pretty sure this is a bad idea: both the ‘pulling out your IV’ idea and the ‘get up and walk around’ idea. Maybe just, like, uh, lay down again? Or, okay yeah don’t do that—”

Ryan keeps pressure against the little wound where the IV had been in and staggers his way to the door. He’s got a vague sense that he’s on a ship, probably the Atlas, and tries to recall its layout.

“—and you are paying zero attention to me which is both typical and just fucking great, can you please get back here because I do not want to wrestle you into bed because you’re bigger than I am and like, _way_ more fit, like, good work on the abs by the way, nice definition. Oh shit, oh fuck, you are actually doing this—”

Ryan looks back at the Paladin who wrings his hands in anxious displeasure. The expression on the man’s face would be amusing if Ryan had any sort of patience left, but he doesn’t.

He smacks at the door sensor until slides open and staggers into the hallway, the Paladin following after him still rambling anxiously.

“—okay, look, if you die in the hallway Lance is probably gonna be upset and I’d really rather not upset Lance since, you know, he was kinda dead for a little while and Allura looks like she’ll murder anyone who upsets him and I have to tell you getting murdered by crazy Altean space magic is not high on my list of priorities so if you’d go back to bed that’d be _awesome_ —"

Ryan leans against the hallway and breathes. Pain radiates down his spine and his head feels like its going to explode into little shivers of agony. He closes his eyes for a second against the sensation before grounding out: “Lance?”

There’s a long beat of silence and Ryan wants to groan with frustration because now the Paladin decides to play mute? But his throat is full of sandpaper and glass. 

“Is that where you are trying to go?” the Paladin asks, quiet and somehow wounded.

Ryan pops open one eye to glare at him and Hunk stares back at him with unhappiness hanging around him like a shroud. Something in the stubborn set of Ryan’s jaw, in the frustrated exhaustion of his glare, has Hunk sighing and pointing down the hallway. “Two more doors down. Allura’ll maybe kill you though.”

“She won’t,” Ryan says, and puts one foot in front of the other, hand sliding along the wall for support.

Hunk follows after him like a silent, unhappy shadow, never touching him but always within range. Ryan finds it harder to ignore his unhappy silence than his anxious nattering, but he lacks the emotional capacity to even attempt to navigate what’s making the Yellow Paladin pace after him like a mournful ghost.

He gets to what he thinks is the right door and palms the lock while Hunk makes a small, bitten off sound of distress. The door slides open to reveal Allura curled around Lance’s still form, both her hands wrapped around his slack right hand, her hair a silver spill over the bed. She raises her head to watch him stumble into the room, holding onto the doorframe until the last second to stagger to the bed. She drops her head to Lance’s chest when he slumps into a long slouch on Lance’s other side, so they bracket him in his sleep.

“Hey,” he says, whispers really, his voice is so shot. She smiles at him wanly from under her hair. He holds out one hand and she tucks it under her cheek where it rests on Lance’s shoulder, effectively pinning him. Ryan rubs his thumb along her cheek and she gives a little sigh.

“Hey,” Allura whispers back, her voice just as hoarse as his. She raises a slim little hand that glows a gentle, sputtering blue towards his cheek. He catches it and presses a kiss to her knuckles.

“None of that, baby girl,” he tells her gently. “I’ll keep.”

She makes a discontented noise, but he keeps her hand pinned to Lance’s chest where it rises and falls in steady rhythm. The lights flicker around them, a tiny sputter of outrage, until Allura sighs: “Enough, enough.” And they go still.

“Atlas?” he asks, keeping her hand pinned when she tugs at it. Allura closes her eyes and hums an agreement. It’s not a surprise, he thinks, given what they know about Altean alchemy and the Atlas and Allura’s own unsteady grasp of her powers. 

“You need to sleep, baby girl,” he says rather than say any of that. She makes another discontented, petulant noise in the back of her throat. He rubs her cheek with his thumb again until she turns into it, all kitten soft. “Does no one any good if you wear yourself down to the bone.”

“Here,” she rasps at him as her eyes drift closed, “I’ll sleep here.”

Ryan keeps rubbing at her cheek until she goes slack against his hand, the long lines of her body easing to fit against Lance’s until they are an impossibly lovely tangle of limbs. He slides his hand from under her cheek and she only sighs low in her sleep. He leans to press a kiss to Lance’s forehead, content to leave him in his dreaming Princess’ embrace.

Hunk’s watching from the doorway with unhappy, dark eyes. Ryan leverages himself off the bed even though he’d like nothing better than to stretch out next to his partner, wrap his hand around his Princess’ hand, and sleep like the dead. But he’s got other people, other responsibilities, and he gets himself out the door on unsteady feet.

“Nadia,” he says, and Hunk makes another unhappy sound in the back of his throat but points the way.

* * *

Updates in _War & Politics_

22hrs ago Garrison Officials Reassure Civilian Leaders in Wake of Phalt City Attacks

16hrs ago Pro-Isolationist Leaders Denounce Attacks

14hr ago Vigils Organized for Fallen MFE Pilots

10hrs ago Shanghai SSE Market Unstable After Tachyon Reactor Failure

9hrs ago Atlas Low-Orbit Mission Launch Continues Despite Unrest

* * *

#### Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) 

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* * *

#### Eastview Research Database

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* * *

The steady sound of typing, quick fingers across little keys, pulls Ina from the soft oblivion of unconsciousness. The room around her is very pale—white walls, blue lights, and soft fabrics—and hums pleasantly with the background sound of a million electrical processes. She breathes in slowly on a four count and breathes out the same.

The typing stops.

“The Atlas?” She asks her unseen visitor. 

“Yes,” Pidge answers. Ina turns her head slowly to regard the Green Paladin. She looks very tired, Ina thinks, and under a great deal of stress. “It’s the safest option.”

Ina closes her eyes and nods. Even the soft white light of the Atlas is too much. Neuroreceptor pathways for distinguishing the light spectrum likely still healing from the dissolution of the mass effect field. “It is the most logical decision.”

“You are very calm,” Pidge notes. Her tone is odd—caught between disbelief and concern, as if she can’t believe that Ina is actually calm, and the fact of that calmness is cause for concern.

“Would being something other than calm benefit the situation?” Ina inquires. She scans the room from under her lashes the way Veronica had taught her, keeping her breathing slow and smooth, her hands still. The room is bare, bland, and inoffensive. Something in her shoulders unknots piece by piece as Pidge’s typing picks up again, as steady as the low thrum of background electronics. 

“Most people don’t really choose to be calm depending upon the logical benefits of their emotional state,” Pidge remarks in the sort of tone that reminds Ina of Veronica stating the obvious to make a point at James. Ina tilts her head to consider Pidge. She’s a slim little thing dwarfed by the white couch occupying most of the far wall. Her laptop is battered, held together with electrical tape, stickers, and stubborn love. Her hair sticks up all over her head like the time Nadia managed to zot James with the arc converter. 

“I am not most people,” Ina says.

Pidge snorts. It seems like an automatic response. “Clearly.”

None of this explains why Pidge is sitting like a guard at her bedside and not with her team or however the Green Paladin spends her time. Ina weighs how to ask that question, crafts in carefully inside her head, but when she opens up her mouth out comes: “Why you?”

Which is both the right and the wrong question. Pidge looks at her over the top of laptop for a long moment and then looks off to the side. Her cheeks look pink. “I read your file,” she says after another measured pause. “All of it.”

Oh.

Ina looks away at the wall until she can smooth her face back into neutral lines. She’d felt her eyes go wide with surprise and her mouth pop open with a comment that never made it out of her mouth. Her file isn’t exactly detailed, but there’s enough in there for an intelligent person to make a guess. The early legal emancipation, the vehement rejection of parental contact, all of her _medical files_. It is a lot for a person to know.

Pidge says nothing while Ina thinks about how she feels about the idea of Pidge holding that much information on her inside Pidge’s head. Ina’s not sure why Pidge _wants_ to hold that knowledge. (Ina wishes _she_ didn’t.) Her reflections and considerations and ruminations rattle around inside her until there’s only one question that can tumble from her, cracked and haunted: “Why?”

Pidge looks uncomfortable. “Because Lance was spending so much time with all of you and I didn’t know any of you.”

There’s something in that statement that makes Ina frown. A number of things about it. “Why,” she repeats, and Pidge makes a face at her. “Why would Lance spending time with us provoke you into hacking the Garrison personnel files?”

“Because he’s my friend,” Pidge spits like it’s a challenge, though Ina doesn’t see why it should be one. “And he makes stupid decisions sometimes.”

“Your friend?” Ina asks, tests this concept against the framework of friendship she knows—Veronica explaining the nuance of an officer’s facial expression, Nadia riding the high bright edge of adrenaline and dragging her along with, Ryan and James showing her how to punch _like so_ , Lance telling stories soft in the dark of the night—and finds it wanting. She makes a small, involuntary sound and Pidge bares her teeth at her.

“Yes, my friend,” Pidge hisses and her face is a nightmare tangle of emotions that Ina cannot pick apart.

She looks away instead and Pidge settles slowly like an enraged bird settling on a nest.

Her communicator, a simple little grey thing that looks like a button, sits on a nightstand near the bed. Ina grabs it before she can think to be subtle, to hide the gesture with a clever slight-of-hand, and she thinks that Veronica would be disappointed. Still, it’s weight in her hand is steadying.

Pidge notices the gesture. “We pulled all your communicators from your armor.”

Ina palms the comms open and Nadia’s voice pours out, words indistinct but her tone happy and teasing. It settles something in Ina to hear it.

Pidge is watching her with an expression for which Ina has no reference. “You’re surprised to have your communicator,” Pidge says, an observation laced with a realization that doesn’t seem happy. “You aren’t surprised to be on the Atlas, but you are surprised to have your communicator.”

Ina considers several responses and discards most of them. The process takes a long time and Pidge goes back to her typing.

“The disruption of the mass effect field should have rendered all communicators, personal or otherwise, useless,” she says simply. “The only reason for you to keep it is either for reasons of sentimentality or because it retained functionality you believed would be useful.”

Pidge makes a face.

“You are not inclined towards sentimentality or emotional attachment, therefor the only answer is that you knew our communications devices retained functionality,” Ina continues as Pidge’s face wears a number of very interesting expressions that flicker too fast for Ina to catalogue. “However, I am uncertain as to why you would know that.”

“Because your squadron leader has an impressive paranoid streak and had me design an entirely new communications device that could withstand getting hit with tachyon particles and a whole host of other bullshit,” Pidge mutters without looking up from her laptop. Her shoulders are hunched like she’s cold. Her keystrokes sound very loud in the little room. “And I’m capable of emotional attachment. I get attached.”

Ina decides to leave that last comment alone for later contemplation and instead slots Pidge’s defensive huddle in with James’ odd behavior before the mission together. “You’re his alternate to the intelligence specialists.”

Pidge mouths something that Ina can’t quite work out sarcastically and then sighs. “A really, _really_ impressive paranoid streak.”

“I do not think that is an appropriate diagnosis,” Ina says as she considers Pidge’s analysis, “given current events.” 

“It’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you, is that it?” Pidge mutters without looking up. She types something with more force than Ina really thinks is necessary before looking up at her with a frown. “You knew what he was up to.”

The statement seems accusatory, but Ina doesn’t understand why it ought to be an accusation. “Yes.”

“He told you his suspicions,” Pidge says, repeats, really, as the statement holds the same content in a different form. Ina frowns at her.

“Yes.”

“All of it.”

“Yes.”

“Did he bother to tell you why he didn’t tell any of _us_ his convoluted bullshit?” Pidge says like she’s laying down the winning card in a poker game.

Ina blinks at her. “Yes.”

Pidge sits back and stares at her. “He did.”

“Of course.” Ina does not understand this line of interrogation in the slightest, but it seems very enlightening for the Green Paladin. “He is my squadron leader. He tells us everything. How else could we plan?”

“Huh,” Pidge says, drawing out the vowel as she studies Ina, then she shakes her head. “Talk about differences in leadership strategies.”

* * *

Group Chat: hoe don’t do it

ResistanceisButyl: so, I’ve got news from planet side

PidgeontheGreenPaladin: … I have questions about the name of this group chat

LivewareProblem: if it applies the MFE team I’m all in favor of it

ResistanceisButyl: So. Ryan’s up?

LivewareProblem: with nadia now

ResistanceisButyl: not Lance? That is surprising

LivewareProblem: he started there, got allura to go to sleep and then dragged himself to nadia’s room. i think he ripped stitches but i’m too scared to check.

Vero: he hasn’t

PidgeontheGreenPaladin: Vero how did you get your screenname free from the rp idiots

Vero: fear

PidgeontheGreenPaladin: okay. fair.

nottheblackpaladin(official): what’s the news?

ResistanceisButyl: apparently Udina doesn’t think Jamie’s team is dead but literally the entire rest of the planet does. All y’all have media appearances scheduled

nottheblackpaladin(official): fuck no

ResistanceisButyl: fuck yes, your idea, baby boy

nottheblackpaladin(official): fu

ResistanceisButyl: can you cry on camera? I think you should work on that. Big pretty tears like a shoujo heroine. I believe in you.

LivewareProblem: Don’t tease Keith. It’s been a long day. Two days. Something. Fuck.

PidgeontheGreenPaladin: Is Lance awake?

LivewareProblem: not yet

nottheblackpaladin(official): how did Kinkade get Allura to go to sleep?

LivewareProblem: called her baby girl and rubbed her cheek until she just. kinda. melted. yeah, i don’t know either

PidgeontheGreenPaladin: … that’s terrifying

nottheblackpaladin(official): Griffin is waking up

Vero: good luck. He’s an asshole when he’s hurt

nottheblackpaladin(official): he’s always an asshole

Vero: well. yes.

OneHandLuke: I am going to bury Admiral Udina in a grave no one can find.

LivewareProblem: Okay. That’s a felony.

* * *

To: takashi.shirogane.lcdr@mail.mil  
From: colleen.holt.civ@mail.mil  
CC: keith.kogane.pln@mail.mil, veronica.serrano.lcdr@mail.mil  
Subject: care & feeding of MFE pilots

Attached: [MR Complete – LT James Griffin.dcm]  
Attached: [MR Complete – LTJG Ryan Kinkade.dcm]  
Attached: [MR Complete – LTJG Nadia Rizavi.dcm]  
Attached: [MR Complete – LTJG Ina Leifsdottir.dcm]  
Attached: [MR Complete – LTJG Lance Serrano.dcm]  
Attached: [MR Incomplete – PLN Allura Altea.dcm]

Congratulations! You have your own set of wounded Mega-Flex Exoskeleton pilots. If you are first time caretakers, this will be educational for you. Things you will need for proper care and feeding of your wounded pilots:

1) protein heavy meals, small & regular, not particularly dense;  
2) regular periods of rest;  
3) a bullwhip.

I am only mostly joking about the bullwhip. But seriously, looking over the scans that you sent me none of their injuries are permanent—not even James, although please tell that idiot boy that next time he grabs a malfunctioning sunspear I am going to shake him until his teeth rattle out. The combination of the quick first aid you and Matt administered and Allura’s healing has brought them all from death’s door without any lingering issues. Assuming, that is, you can get them to stay still long enough for them to recover from the injuries. 

They will be in significant pain while their neuro-structures recover from the mass effect field collapse, that should slow them down. The pain is symptomatic of quintessence-amplified neuropathway regeneration, it is a good thing! Though I imagine it will be rather alarming to watch.

Do not, however, let Allura do any more healings. The girl is tapped out no matter how she may argue. I’ve attached my assessment of her current heath status as well. Contact me if any of them show the symptoms I’ve noted on their charts. If you are still concerned, send Katie and I’ll come up. At the very least I can shout them into obedience if they get too difficult, idiot children that they tend to be.

Love,  
Colleen

This document may contain information covered under the Privacy Act, 5 UESC 522(a), and/or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (PL 104-191) and its various implementing regulations and must be protected in accordance with those provisions. Healthcare information is personal and sensitive and must be treated accordingly. If this correspondence contains healthcare information, it is being provided to you after appropriate authorization from the patient or under circumstance that do not require patient authorization. You, the recipient, are obligated to maintain it in a safe, secure, and confidential manner. Redisclosure without additional patient consent or as permitted by law is prohibited. Unauthorized redisclosure or failure to maintain confidentiality subjects you to application of an appropriate sanction. If you have received this correspondence in error, please notify the sender at once and destroy any copies you may have made.

* * *

The world comes back faster this time, less of a struggle to drag himself out of the comfortable oblivion of unconsciousness. James keeps his breathing easy, slow, and deep as if he still lay dreamless and still, and listens. The hum of electronics, the soft static a ship’s effector field, and the steady inhale-exhale of his watcher are all he finds. Tilting his head, he stares at Kogane, who glowers back at him.

“What are you doing,” he whisper-rasps. He wants to make it a demand, but his vocal cords refuse to cooperate.

Kogane rolls his eyes expressively. “Someone has to watch you.”

James just stares at him until Kogane squirms, just a little bit. 

“Allura won’t leave Lance,” he elaborates. “And you were almost dead.”

There’s an accusation in there that James lacks the capacity to fully parse and honestly isn’t really inclined to try. He shifts slightly and finds that his body has decided that now it will actually respond to demands that it move. He braces for a moment and then groans, low and heartfelt, as he hauls himself into sitting. “Fuck my life,” he mutters as he tries to work out how to untangle himself from the thin blanket covering him and the delicate IV tubes. “ _Fuck this_.”

Kogane is at his side before he can really register it, pressing him back into the little bed with a frustrated snarl. “Jesus Christ, stay still, you asshole.”

James shoves at him, annoyed at the way his hands shake and he can’t get any force behind it. Kogane is a wall of irritated pilot who snarls back at him. James curls his hand into a fist in Kogane’s shirt to hide how it trembles. “Where,” he hisses because he can’t get the force necessary to snarl, “is my fucking _team_.”

“They’re fine,” Kogane huffs, “better than you, you miserable asshole. You’re the one that nearly up and _died_. Was that part of your brilliant fucking plan?”

James tries shaking him by the shoulder he’s absolutely not clinging to keep himself upright. It barely moves Kogane, who narrows his eyes at him. “My _brilliant plan_ involved you bringing your big fuck off robot down like big damn heroes _before_ the assholes blew the fuck out of the place.”

Kogane sits back, letting James pull himself all the way to sitting up by the hand he’s got clamped in Kogane’s uniform, and gives him an incredulous look. “And how were we supposed to figure that one out?” Kogane demands as he gets around James’ back to get him settled so they can glare at each other. “Telepathy?”

“You could try reading your damned reports,” James snaps. “I’ve been putting nearly everything in them for the past nine months! Why do you think I moved to PCA Lance to my unit?”

“Because you’re an asshole,” Kogane growls back, but he holds onto James as he tries to figure out how to get his legs untangled from the blankets. “You aren’t seriously trying to get up, are you?”

“Yes,” James grunts as he gets one leg free, “and yes.”

“Matt’s right,” Kogane sighs, “you’re a suicidal idiot.”

James makes a rude hand gesture and Kogane shakes him, gently, before slinging James’ arm around his shoulders with muttered profanity. 

“I didn’t PCA Lance just because I’m an asshole,” James tells him instead of shrieking in pain the way he wants to. The words come out strained anyway. He knows Kogane notices by the way his mouth thins down into an unhappy frown. “I mean, I _am_ , but with Lance in both our units any mission he does with me must have all the paperwork cc’ed via secured and ptp channels to _you_. And _only_ to you.” Kogane freezes for a moment and stares at him. James glares back. “You are literally the only person in this entire fucking joint who knows exactly what we’ve been doing without actually being on our team. Or you would if you weren’t too busy being too cool to read your damned reports.”

Kogane continues to stare at him with an expression James can’t parse until he blinks slow and deliberate like an irate cat. “That,” Kogane says slowly, “is a really convoluted bit of sneaky bullshit.”

“My chain of command just tried to kill me with thermite explosives and tech-ed up murderers for hire,” James says primly. 

The sound Kogane makes is stuck between an infuriated buzz saw and a distressed cat—a rattling growl that rumbles through his throat in a way that is distinctly not human and raises the fine hairs along the back of James’ neck. James snarls back at him. Kogane fits an arm around his back and they both breathe out, shaking and in time with each other, as Kogane hauls him to his feet. They stand there for a long moment until James can control the fine tremble through his limbs. 

“Not that I don’t completely sympathize with the urge to end your miserable existence,” Kogane says as they figure out how to make their way to the door like the most uncoordinated three-legged race contestants in the universe, “but how the fuck did you manage that?”

“You really read absolutely nothing of what I sent you, like, none of it,” James says wonderingly. “Brilliant fucking plans gone straight into the shitter because you can’t be bothered to open up a fucking report file. Oh my god.”

“I read them,” Kogane mutters. “Skimmed. Whatever, fucking things were like sixty pages each.”

“I cannot believe you,” James says faintly. They have to pause for a moment as pain spikes through James, making his vision haze and his hand on Kogane’s shoulder tighten to the point of bruising, but his support says nothing. He taps Kogane’s shoulder when he gets his heartrate back into an acceptable range. “Lance, Ina,” he says and they both ignore the uneven thinness of his voice, “Nadia, Ryan.”

It’s a little mantra for him as they make their slow way down the Atlas’ quiet hallways. Lance, Ina, Nadia, Ryan. His team, _his_ , in reverse order form when he’d seen them last. Kogane is mostly silent beside him, seemingly content to be a living crutch as he hobbles the scant meters that separates their little rooms. Each step grinds his joints with pain, nerves and neuron telling him that he should lay his ass back down, but he keeps moving because if he stops, he’s not entirely certain he can get up again.

Kogane says something uncharitable under his breath that James ignores. They stop in front of a door and James fumbles with the lock pad while Kogane wears a constipated expression. “He’s not yours,” Kogane says suddenly. James looks at him, bemused. “Lance. He’s not yours.”

The door opens on silent motors. Allura sits up slowly, her hair spilling around her in silver waves, her expression feral and unfriendly, her hand curling on Lance’s chest as he sleeps. James looks at her and then looks back Keith. “He’s not yours either.”

The sound Kogane makes is bleak and nearly despairing, but James doesn’t have time to wonder at it. Allura extends one hand to him and makes a little ‘come here’ gesture at him, and he goes as if pulled by a hook under his ribs.

* * *

Serpentapologist reblogged from Respondent-despondent:

jellyfishdirigible:

I can’t deal with … any of this. And you can’t write fix it fics for real life. Someone recc me happy AUs and pre-Voltron fic for our sniper boys. I want to wallow and pretend this isn’t happening for a while.

*

Respondent-despondent:

back to the hedgerows where the bodies are mounted  
161K words, complete, by shrike

Notes: Slow burn fic. Like regency style slow burn. Significant hand touches (handing over The Last Ammo Round), letters, _sharing cover_. Basically, the fic that set the tropes for sniper-husbands. 

between the wars (stay)  
14K, yukikaze

Notes: The tenderest, kinkest smut you ever did read

Like Real People  
31K, summerskyforgotten

Notes: Kinda Romeo & Juliet/star-crossed-lovers fic between the paladins and the MFEs with Kinkade & Serrano as the lovers divided by their jealous team leads.

*

kitkatpanderer:

any MCD on the star-crossed lovers fic? Because I don’t think any of us can deal with that right now.

*

Respondent-despondent:

Oh fuck, no! Happy endings. Happy endings for everyone, this is the hill I will die on.

932 notes  
Tagged: #fic recommendations, #kinkance, #happy fics because everything is terrible, #and just got worse, #there should be Fix It for real life, #because this is Too Much

* * *

#### Atlas Launch Continues Despite Phalt City Attacks

Only hours after leading Voltron’s rescue and retrieval mission in the wake of the Phalt City attacks, LTCD Takashi Shirogane proceeded with the first orbital launch of the Atlas out of Earth’s atmosphere. Civilian leaders have criticized the move as particularly callous in the face of the loss of the entirety of the MFE squadron and the Paladins’ own Lance Serrano, but the Garrison defended the launch as a necessary test of planetary defenses.

[image: _LCRD Takashi Shirogane faces down an angry press corps. One reporter stands at the back of the room clearly shouting, her face is streaked with tears. His expression is unusually shuttered._ ]

The Garrison declined to reveal what planetary defenses the Atlas would be testing while in planetary orbit around Earth.

_click for more_

Related stories in War  & Politics: 
  1. Altean Alchemy: What Do We Really Know?
  2. The MFE Team: Earth’s Lost Heroes
  3. Civilian Leaders Call for Inquiry Into Terminus Attacks
  4. Leaked Documents Allege Presence of Eezo-Powered Weapons At Terminus Attacks



* * *

* * *

EightRoundsRapid reblogged from Kiss-this-Then:

killingtime:

anyone noticed that as soon as the MFE/counter-terrorism team was announced missing in action the Paladins’ exited stage left (not) pursued by a bear and haven’t said a peep anywhere since?

*

alldonewiththisnicenessandshit:

They just lost their friends and _still_ have to defend the universe. Please go gargle bleach you miserable pustule of human being.

*

killingtime:

are we sure that they were even friends?

*

Kiss-this-Then:

Seriously. Take your ‘just asking questions’ and go gargle bleach as requested.

214 notes  
Tagged: #i’m not cluttering the tags with this shit, #OP go fuck yourself, #we’re not even at the 48hour mark, #and this is what you want to do?, #gargle bleach

* * *

Allura and James are talking near him, over his head—literally for once rather than just figuratively, and Lance luxuriates for a moment in the feeling of having two of his favorite people close by, close enough to touch. Only thing missing is Ryan (a steady weight at his back, a constant by his side, a puzzle piece in his life he’d never known had been missing until Ryan’d slotted into place) and the ache of that absence is enough to get him to open his eyes to glare of overhead lights. He hisses his displeasure for a moment and the quiet voices stop. 

“Lance,” Allura breathes and then his world is full of her hair, her scent, the feeling of her pressing against him, shaking with silent tears.

“Woah,” he says intelligently. “Uh?”

“You were a little bit dead for a little bit, asshole,” James says dryly. “It upset the Princess and goes against a direct order. I distinctly remember ordering you not to die.”

“Oh, I died again?” Lance says because he’s a really intelligent and sharp-witted person. Honest. He pets Allura’s hair while she hiccups, little sounds caught between laughter and sobs, against his neck. He can’t really see anything around the cloud of her hair, a messy tangled mane all over his face, but he’s pretty okay with that.

“ _Again_ ,” James repeats like he somehow heard Lance wrong. “What the fuck do you mean _again_?”

“He’s being dramatic,” Keith sighs like Lance has personally offended him. Which, huh, Lance had not been expecting Keith to be in his room, but today is determined to be all kinds of weird. “He blocked Coran from an explosion and got knocked out. We popped him in a cyropod and he was just fine.”

“I still have the scar all over my back,” Lance says and he’s not sure if he’s confirming or contradicting Keith’s explanation while James makes a noise like an angry tea kettle—high hissing displeasure signaling an incoming explosion. “But no, you weren’t there for the time I, like, died-died. You were, uh,” Lance has to think for a moment. It feels like someone reached inside his head and jumbled up all his memories. Putting them back into order takes a hot minute. Allura curls herself into a warm ball against his side, both her hands fisted in his shirt like she can physically hold him back from death itself—which he supposes she can. “With the Blade? On the back of space narwhale? Somewhere.” Time and memory are an unnavigable path for him and he gives it up as a bad job. “Nah. Knocked Allura and Blue out of the way of this big fuck off electro-radiation wave and,” Lance makes a sound he thinks imitates getting zapped by space death rays and makes a little hand gesture he’s pretty sure isn’t rude, “yep, dead. It’s fine though. Allura brought me back.”

Allura’s hands tighten into claws against his chest and he knows he’s gonna have bruises matching her fingerprints but that’s okay. 

James makes another of those angry tea kettle noises before saying, voice an obnoxious drawl: “Yeah, you don’t get to keep him, hotshot.”

“I _wasn’t there_ , asshole,” Keith snaps back. “His reckless tendencies are not on me.”

“Precisely my point,” James says all calm and controlled and Lance thinks he can maybe hear Keith grinding his teeth. He’d find it funny if the entire exchange weren’t so confusing.

Allura sits up abruptly and they both go quiet. Lance smiles up at her as she stares down at him. Her eyes are huge, brilliantly blue, and a little wild. She’s the prettiest thing he’s ever seen.

“He’s mine,” she says. She sounds tired and stressed and trending towards a really big freak out. He can see her rising stress levels in the tight lines of her expression. There’s going to be screaming and crying in someone’s immediate future. His, probably. Lance catches her hand and rubs his thumb across the back of her knuckles. She blinks at him. “He’s mine.”

“Well,” James says in that same obnoxious drawl, “you can always com—”

“Yes,” Allura interrupts and Lance has to bite his lip to keep from laughing like an asshole at the way James blinks in surprise. “Yes. I am going to supervise,” she turns those big, big eyes on James and Lance loves him a little for the way James’ expression just crumples in the face of her distress. She reaches out and cards a hand through James’ hair, pulling it out of his eyes, before making a fist and pinning him in place. “You cannot be trusted. Not with him. Not with yourself. From now on, you take orders from me.”

James blinks, tilts his head into her hold, and blinks again. “Oh,” he says softly. “Okay.”

* * *

[thumbnail: _The MFE-Ares team walks towards their planes, the sun throwing their shadows in front of them as long black streaks across the tarmac. They look nearly mythic in the set of their shoulders, the glow of the sun in their hair and across the pale wings of the planes. A snippet of song lyric is imposed over the image._ ]

##### Defenders MV – [ ‘A Way To Say Goodbye](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75shbkWBm8g)’

982 views

32 comments

**yalltron – 4 hours ago**  
and today i discovered that i don’t actually need my heart to live BECAUSE YOU RIPPED OUT WHAT WAS LEFT  
212 likes ^

**divinefailinggrace – 2 hours ago**  
This was an attack. We should sue.  
64 likes

**theirresponsibleparty – 4 hours ago**  
Okay so that was extremely rude and I resent your ability to make me feel things  
156 likes ^

**eightbitdemon – 6 hours ago**  
just when I thought I was done crying for the day  
101 likes ^

* * *

Nadia grunts a little as Ryan shifts in his sleep, pinning her more effectively to the little white bed she’s been confined to despite her (loud, insistent, offended) observations that she’s just fine and doesn’t need to be kept in bed like a little old lady who’s fallen and broken her hip. Vero’d given her a long, unamused look and then proceeded to ignore her. Which is hurtful, really.

“You let Ryan get up,” she tries, like this is somehow a new argument. “I don’t see why I can’t get up.”

“Because you have zero sense of self-preservation, even by the basis of the rest of your team, or the capacity to understand when you have extended beyond your limits,” Veronica says without looking up. Nadia sulks as Vero taps her tablet with the sort of calm control that Nadia finds in absolutely no way impossibly sexy. “Also, unlike the Yellow Paladin, I am not a pushover.”

That is an unfortunately fair assessment of how Ryan had stumbled into her room. Haggard, ashen with pain, and trailed by a paladin who’d wrung his hands ineffectually and eyed all of them as if they were unexploded ordinance. Nadia bites her lip to keep from laughing because it’s mean to laugh at the paladins. It really is. Even if they are a complete disaster.

“I’m bored,” Nadia absolutely does not whine.

Vero ignores her. 

“Like, really, really, _really_ bored,” Nadia repeats. She tries to wiggle out from under Ryan, but he grumbles in his sleep and tightens his hold until she’s sure she’s got bruises, which Nadia is normally not opposed to, but this is not the way she wants to get them.

Vero flicks a finger across her tablet.

“So bored,” Nadia tries again, prodding at Ryan. He responds by burying his face in her stomach like she’s a favored stuffed teddy bear. Nadia frowns at him. “You are no help,” she tells him as he makes indistinct cranky noises in his sleep. “None at all.”

“Don’t wake him up,” Veronica warns. “We don’t need both him and James making nuisances of themselves.”

Nadia pouts. “Why does Jamie get to get out of bed, but I have to stay here?”

“Because Kogane is also a sucker with no capacity to tell people no,” Veronica says with zero inflection. She taps something on her tablet and sighs like it personally offended her. “I do not have such a problem.”

This, Nadia reflects, is unfortunately true. 

“And it’s easier to get James to rest after he’s assuaged his ridiculous overprotective streak,” Veronica continues. She taps something else and then looks up to pin Nadia with an unamused look. “You, however, just cause trouble.”

Nadia wants to argue with this point but unfortunately Veronica has a long, documented list of all the things Nadia has done when bored. Ryan shifts in his sleep, heavy and warm and very, very pretty. It could be worse, she reflects, she could _not_ have a lapful of very attractive fighter pilot. 

She runs her fingers along the back of Ryan’s neck just feel how he moves into the touch, just a little, in his sleep. “I’m still bored,” she tells Vero rather than any of the sappy and disgustingly affectionate things that spring to mind. “You should do something about that.”

Veronica goes back to her tablet with an eyeroll. “I’ll get you a crossword.”

* * *

frogprincess reblogged from teamterrorbanana

[Video: _LTJG Ryan Kinkade dribbles a basketball lazily, just an easy flex and release of his fingers, as he eyes Lt James Griffin. In the background LTJG Lance Serrano lays sprawled across a bench with a crumbled t-shirt over his face and his head in PLN Allura of Altea’s lap. She pets his hair absently as she sits shoulder-to-shoulder with LTJG Ina Liefsdottir. They both look terribly young and pretty in the sunlight._

_“You don’t learn,” Ryan says with a lazy sort of arrogance. He’s shirtless and the sun glows along his skin, he looks a young god come to play with the mortals. James sneers at him, making him laugh._

_“That arrogance of yours is gonna be your downfall one day,” James says, but he’s breathing hard, enough to make the dog tags around his neck chime._

_“Maybe, but not today,” Ryan replies easily before feinting to one side and then another. There’s an intense, spirited scuffle, but Ryan moves with a type of languid, predatory grace that has James scrambling to match. Ryan dribbles the ball straight between James’ legs before dunking it into the net._

_James shakes his head as Ryan does an easy pull up on the steel basketball hoop before dropping gracefully to the ground. “You’re a terrible showoff.”_

_“Brother,” Ryan says laughing, “do you even hear the things you say?"_ ]

FullRefundTCU:

I’ve been going through their accounts and making myself sad. 

*

custos-titan:

Griffin never did win against Kinkade, did he?

*

jetpackattack:

no and now I’m even _more_ sad. thanks, satan

2,839 notes  
Tagged: #Defenders of Earth, #MFE Pilots, #Ryan Kinkade, #James Griffin, #everything about this is unfair

* * *

During the low, silly conversation that spills between them after Allura’s little declaration of ownership Kogane slips out of the room without a word. 

James feels it when Kogane slides out of the room like a sulking cat. It’s like his body has a sixth sense permanently attuned to one pissy, temperamental black paladin regardless of how much he resents it. He dithers, a little, about leaving Allura and Lance when he’s only just managed to drag his sorry ass to them. There’s something still high-strung and terribly fragile about Allura, a desperate sort of madness in her brilliant blue eyes that has everything to do with loss piled upon loss piled upon unimaginable loss. Lance still looks like he’s the wrong step away from death. But James still hasn’t seen the rest of his team and their absence nags at him like a sore tooth. 

He reaches out to run a hand through Lance’s short, shaggy curls and tugs one of them gently. “Think you can manage to stay here and not die?”

Lance swats at his hand, or tries to, all he really manages to do is flap it ineffectually at James. “It’s not like I plan these things.”

James tights his grip in Lance’s hair until he squirms. “Let’s not go for a hat trick.”

“A what?” Allura asks. Confusion takes some that tightly wound feralness out of her expression and James is glad of it. 

“Soccer term,” Lance explains. He’s still got Allura’s hand caught in one of his, running his thumb over her knuckles.

“And what is soccer?” 

“It’s, uh, type of game,” Lance starts, unsure. “There’s two goals and you try to kick the ball into the other guy’s goal.”

“Like basketball?”

“Man, never let Ryan hear you say that. Not ever.”

Allura makes a thoughtful sound. “I still don’t understand what this has to do with hats.”

James leaves them to it. Lance trying to explain the details of a game he’s clearly never learned and Allura asking him more and more outlandish questions. It seems to be some sort of game between the two of them. Allura catches his arm as he heaves himself to his feet, her expression complex. She looks at him for a long moment and then at the door, biting her lip. He waits for her, swaying on his feet a little, but he waits. 

“Be,” Allura pauses for a moment as if the word she wants won’t come to mind.

“Kind?” He suggests with a sardonic smirk that he can’t help. He’s pretty certain that Kogane would tolerate kindness from him as well as he would tolerate it from Kogane. It’s just not how they’re built. She frowns at him prettily.

“Thoughtful,” she says instead. “Be thoughtful.”

James wants to argue that he’s _always_ thoughtful, thanks, but Allura pins him with a knowing look and he shuts right the fuck up. He also starts to fall over, which makes both of them squawk with alarm. There’s a very confused moment where both Allura and Lance try to catch him as he crumples, and he ends up sprawled across the bed and both of them in an undignified puddle groaning weakly.

“Get off me,” Lance complains, “you weight a ton.”

“Not all of us are made of pipe cleaners and bailing wire,” James snipes back as he tries to fend off their hands, “some of us actually have muscle mass.”

Lance makes a noise of protest like a duck being strangled and tries to smother him with a pillow.

* * *

#### The Cellular, Biochemical, and Clinical Aspects of Altean Quintessence-Based Alchemical Healing

Holt, C  
+Author Information

Abstract

**BACKGROUND:**  
The response to tissue injury requires the symphonious interaction of immune cells, keratinocytes, fibroblasts, and endothelial cells, which unite to regenerate the damaged epithelium. Recent developments and the introduction of Altean healing methodologies have elucidated the cellular and molecular mechanisms required for wound healing and have raised the prospect of novel therapeutic targets.

**METHODS:**  
Review of the pertinent literature. Including a review of Altean records of quintessence mapping and matching methodologies.

**RESULTS:**  
The initial inflammatory response leads to the influx of macrophages and neutrophils, which release cytokines, growth factors, and nitric oxide, and induce nearby keratinocytes to migrate across the wounded epithelium. This process, known as re-epithelialization, requires integrin-mediated activation of Rho-GTPases. The subsequent influx of fibroblasts and endothelial cells results in the production of tissue stroma and formation of new blood vessels, which lead to the generation of functional tissue. Importantly, disease states associated with impaired or excessive wound healing can be attributed to defects in these responses, providing a rationale for the use of evidence-based biological therapies accelerated via Altean quintessence manipulation techniques.

**CONCLUSION:**  
The elucidation of the cellular and biochemical response to quintessence-based healing is essential for an understanding to the treatment of clinical conditions during which Altean alchemical techniques are deployed.

* * *

Matt tosses his communicator idly as he watches Shiro flex his hands on the main control panel of the Atlas bridge. The pale amino-silicate under his Altean hand buckles just slightly, threatening to crack, and it makes a faint crinkling sound as Shiro stares off into the middling distance. Shiro’s face is placid and his breathing calm, but his knuckles have gone as white as his hair. Matt tosses his communicator again before snatching it out of the air as he contemplates how to broach the burr well worked under Shiro’s saddle.

“So,” he drawls out, “that could have gone worse.”

Shiro shoots him an incredulous look. 

“I mean, all the good Admiral did was demand your immediate return with ‘government property’ that you have ‘improperly acquisitioned’ or ‘face a fucking court martial’,” Matt continues as he tosses his communicator again. Shiro closes his eyes and looks like he’s counting to ten in as many languages as he knows. Which, Matt assumes, is quite a few what with being the Champion of the Galra arenas and all. “Could have just threatened to blow you out of the sky to finish the job.”

Now Shiro does snarl. It’s a really impressive look, Matt’s got to say, ten out of ten on the intimidation scale. When he says this Shiro sputters like a dying engine for a couple of seconds before he dissolves in to hiccupping laughter.

“ _Matt_ ,” Shiro says, “goddammit.”

“What?”

“This is serious.”

“Yep,” Matt agrees cheerfully. “What little that remains of UEMS high command before Sendak’s run at being a two-bit intergalactic warlord just tried to kill Jamie’s team and is now obliquely blaming _you_ for it which is really an impressive bit of political bullshit and I can’t wait to tell Jamie because he’s going to do that thing where he swears for a solid five minutes straight while stomping around before going all quiet and murderous. It’s pretty fascinating to watch, honestly.”

Shiro heaves out a sigh that makes his bangs flutter. Matt tosses his communicator again.

“So, state of the Atlas as I see it,” Matt continues. He pauses for a second until Shiro makes an interested little noise. “You have Jamie’s team safely holed up on the Atlas until they can completely heal,” Matt ticks this off on a finger making Shiro rolls his eyes, “which my mother has repeatedly reassured you will happen if they just hold still long enough for it to take,” Matt ticks this off another finger as Shiro settles himself against the main console and folds his arms in his classic brooding pose, “Allura is tapped out for healing and risks hurting herself if she tries anything else so add her to the injured tally,” Matt ticks off another finger, “which means team Voltron is down both Blue paladins—”

“Lance is the Red Paladin,” Shiro interjects.

Matt gives him a long, long look until Shiro drops his gaze to his feet, frowning thoughtfully.

“Which, interesting that the MFE team goes down and takes out both Blue Paladins with them,” Matt continues as Shiro frowns harder, “you’ve got the entire planet mourning and scared, Udina is on the wrong foot and trying to cover it with some very loud bluster, and the stock markets are going bat shit in some _very_ interesting ways.”

Shiro looks up, gaze sharp. “Why are you telling me about stock markets?”

“Have you ever looked at how the stock market responds to any news about Allura,” Matt asks innocently and tosses his communicator. He pouts when Shiro snatches it out the air. “You should. Particularly stories about her magic. Might give you some insight into why people are disappointing you.”

Now Shiro swears, low and vicious and in more languages than Matt, the consummate polyglot, knows. 

Matt loves him just a little for it.

* * *

#### TRANSCRIPT OF SNN SPECIAL REPORT WITH HIBIKI KANZAKI

HIBIKI KANZAKI: Good evening gentle listeners. I come to you with a heavy heart and a tongue that scarce can find a way to say the words of sorrow. The Garrison has confirmed today that Lieutenant James Griffin, Lieutenant Junior Grade Ryan Kinkade, Lieutenant Junior Grade Nadia Rizavi, Lieutenant Junior Grade Ina Leifsdottir, and Lieutenant Junior Grade Lance Serrano were killed in action during the terrorist attacks on the Joint Chiefs’ Compound, nicknamed ‘the Terminus’, protecting the experimental tachyon reactor core at the heart of the facility. The UEMS command has been unusually quiet on funeral plans for the fallen soldiers, leaving some with questions….

* * *

Return of the Extremist  
wcn.gbc.com/return-of-the-extremist/page 1  
2 days ago – In this series of articles we consider the rise of pro-human extremism in the wake of liberation from Sendak’s military occupation of Earth.

Silence on the Desert Front  
wcn.globalnewsnetwork.com…/silence-on-the-desert-front  
12 hours ago – In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the newly completed “Terminus,” now in ruins, the world sits in silent mourning for the fallen MFE team turned counter-terrorist force…

Tardy Defender Presides Over the Terminus Collapse  
wcn.dailyreview.com…/pop/…/leaked-pictures-reveal…  
9 hours ago – defenders of who? Delayed arrival further proof earth not a priority for alien-led team …

* * *

Keith puts his palms against the hallway wall and tries to remember how to breathe as soon as the door to Lance’s room slides closed on silent motors. He feels tethered to this place, desperately wanting to leave but afraid to be too far from Griffin’s orbit for reasons he refuses to consider too deeply. Listening to Allura’s declaration ownership, watching her fist a hand in Griffin’s dark hair (dark silk in dark hands until Allura’s knuckles went white and Griffin went glassy-eyed and breathless), watching as Lance went slack and pleased under their combined hands made something in him curdled like spoiling milk. The memory of Allura closing down the lion bond, stepping out of it like it was a skin she was shedding, tugs at him. She’s the princess, her life force is bound to the lions, and she’d stepped away from it like a coat she’d outgrown.

_you can always com— yes, I am coming to supervise_ the words rattle around Keith’s head like marbles let lose to knock all his thoughts to pieces. He tries to think about it rationally, she can’t leave, stop being a paladin, walk away like it has nothing to do with her. That’s not a rational fear-concern- _interpretation_ of her words. It’s just anxiety. Just his own fear of breaking the thing that Shiro _loves_ because he’s not Shiro. Because he doesn’t—can’t—lead the way Shiro does. But she’d fisted her hand in Griffin’s hair like she owned every piece of him and was glad of it.

_from now on, you take orders from me_

Keith curls his hands into fists against the wall and tries to remember all the little reasonable, rational, sensible reasons why his team (Shiro’s team, the team _Shiro_ trust to _him_ ) isn’t shattering into pieces just as they got back to Earth. 

Because if Allura leaves then Lance will follow because he’d die for her—apparently has _already_ died for her and Keith didn’t even _know_ it.

He slides down the hallway wall to stare at the ceiling and wonder at the mess of his emotions. 

Keith sticks his head between his knees and tried to count in Hunk’s steady rhythm until his heartrate decided to get back into normal ranges. Tries to remember the sound of Shiro’s calm voice telling them how to arrange Lance’s limp and deathly pale body as if he were dead in truth and not just a trick of clever chemistry and Altean magic. Tries to remember Matt’s easy familiarity with how to play pretend for a howling press and take comfort in Matt’s confidence rather than tear himself to pieces because Matt even knows how to play that game. Tries to remember the steady line of Hunk’s jaw and his firm tone walking them through how to dismantle the remains of the tachyon reactor.

The image Nadia suddenly so still and so quiet springs unbidden to his mind and he curls up tighter, breathing turning erratic. It had been bad enough to watch Lance, who’d never even woken up completely from Allura dragging him back from death’s door with a feral snarl curling her lips, go limp and loose. But to watch Nadia’s eyes go blank before they closed had stopped something in his heart that refuses to come back online. To watch, useless, as _motherfucking Griffin_ convulsed in allergic reaction while Matt swore, furious and filthy and terrified, as Shiro held Griffin down for Allura to heal.

He tightens his hands in hair to the point of pain and tries to remember the sound of Hunk’s voice counting out time like he had nowhere else to be.

Keith jolts when the door to Lance’s room slides open with a soft hiss of displaced air.

Griffin stares down at him, pale and sweating slightly and frowning like Keith personally makes his life harder by existing. He’s also clutching the doorframe hard enough to make his fingers go white. Keith can hear the uneven, frantic beat of Griffin’s heart and wishes desperately that he couldn’t. Keith wishes that he didn’t know that walking the few steps from Lance’s bed to the door that Griffin now clings to, trying to hide how hard he’s breathing and the way his entire body is lit with pain, costs Griffin.

He’s shoving himself onto his feet before he can really think about it. Griffin says something clever and urbane and pithy that Keith doesn’t quite hear that makes Lance laugh from his (death) bed. 

“I can walk,” Griffin tells him even as he lets Keith sling his arm around Keith’s neck like the bulkiest necklace. “I’m not a complete invalid.”

Lance makes a skeptical sound and Griffin flips him off to Allura’s soft laughter. Keith risks a look at them, unsure of what he’ll find. Lance still looks like he’s decided to camp outside of death’s door, pale and wan and fragile in ways Keith’s never seen him. Allura sits next to him like an avenging angel—pale eyes huge and luminous, hand curled possessively over Lance’s heart, and her hair a wild mane around her face, all down her back, spilling across the bed. She watches Keith with a thoughtfulness to her gaze that makes him want to hide, afraid suddenly she’ll see the inside of his head and all the thoughts twisting around themselves there.

“You could crawl,” Keith says instead of all the things screaming inside his head like buzzards over carrion. “Maybe.”

Griffin sputters, his face a mask of offense, while Lance laughs in delight.

* * *

##### YouVidGalaxy

You searched for: Black Paladin

About 33,622 results

#####  Verpit Sal and Paladin Hunk’s Kitchen Adventures – ft. LCRD Takashi Shirogane

Verpit Sal & Paladin Hunk Productions  
6.4M Views  
8 Months Ago  
This week Paladin Hunk demonstrates the appropriate way to control an oil fire and why Shiro should never, ever be left unattended in his kitchen ever. Not that he said that this would happen, repeatedly, not at all. (Sal note: The Black Paladins have impressive destructive abilities!)

##### Galaxy Garrison Alien Education Series: The Blade of Mamora!

Galaxy Garrison  
4.8M Views  
7 Months Ago  
As the beacon for hope and peace in the universe, Earth welcomes our friends and allies from across the stars. This educational series will teach you about our allies’ cultures, language, history, and …

##### Ichiro Kishida interview with LCDR Shirogane & PLN Kogane

Boogiepop Reporting  
1.5M Views  
6 Weeks Ago  
BPR correspondent talks to LCRD Takashi Shirogane and Black Paladin Keith Kogane about leadership, their return to Earth, culture shock, and the daily life of the paladins.


	11. five-sided puzzle palace pt 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey.
> 
> Hey.
> 
> Did you spot the change in rating? Maybe you should pay attention to the change in rating. Because there is smut in this chapter. First section with Lance & Allura, so maybe skip over that if it ain't your thing.

swagtician reblogged from sequencefairy:

[Gif 1: _Ryan and Lance try to mean mug at the camera the words_ death don’t discriminate _flicker in front of them for a moment. Lance breaks after about three seconds of trying to hold a serious expression and presses his face against Ryan’s shoulder as he laughs_.]

[Gif 2: _Nadia leans into a camera shot for a moment, grin wide and bright and a little terrifying, before the words_ it takes _snaps over her face for a moment until she pulls away and bounces backwards, her ponytail moving with every step_.]

[Gif 3: _Ina watches a technology demonstration done by elementary school students, when she leans down the words_ and takes _shimmer in the space above the graceful curve of her back as she talks to the children_.]

[Gif 4: _As James walks away from the camera towards one of the MFE-Ares planes the words_ and it takes _appear over the broad expanse of his back._ ]

[Gif 5: _Allura looks up slowly from behind a speaker’s podium with the words_ and we keep living anyway _imposed over the dark wood. Her eyes are tired and full of pain, but her back is very straight._ ]

solarislion:

[[insp](http://romanovass.tumblr.com/post/147145249096)]

 

*

cupids’oof:

ow

*

halcyon-quintants:

I thought I was done crying for today. I was wrong.

*

roundabout: 

Hey. 

Hey. 

OP. 

how _dare you_

1,231,891 notes  
Tagged: #MFE-Ares pilots, #James Griffin, #Ryan Kinkade, #Lance Serrano, #Ina Leifsdottir, #Nadia Rizavi, #Allura Altea, #OP you are a monster, #how dare you, #I will never be over this, #poor Allura, #hasn’t the universe taken enough from her?

* * *

**1-20 of 6,341 Works in Allura of Altea/Lance Serrano**

like Johan on the ocean by shrike  
Defenders RPF  
**Graphic Depictions of Violence** , **Mature** ,  Allura of Altea/Lance Serrano, Allura of Altea, Lance Serrano, James Griffin, Ryan Kinkade, Ina Leifsdottir, Veronica Serrano, Nadia Rizavi, Canon Typical Violence, Friends To Lovers, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, Hurt/Comfort, Altean Alchemy, i don’t pretend to understand it, but i will use it for dramatic effect, Significant Hand Touches

Пустое в ы сердечным т ы  
Она, обмолвясь, заменила,  
И все счастливые мечты  
В душе влюбленной возбудила.  
Пред ней задумчиво стою;  
Свести очей с нее нет силы;  
И говорю ей: “как в ы милы!”  
И мыслю: “как т е б я люблю!”  
\--Alexander Puskin, 1828

They set a pattern between them, one built upon careful informality that preserved their delicate balance as casual friends as befitting Paladins of Voltron, and where if one moved the other moved to match. It’s a chess match with no end or resolution. And they thought themselves comfortable in their quiet longing. 

Until the MFE-Ares pilots came along. 

Because not a single one of them has ever heard of this thing called ‘restraint’ or ‘chill.’

Language: Universal Basic Words: 66,949 Chapters: 7/7 Comments: 561 Kudos: 2352 Bookmarks: 461 Hits: 79008

 

I’d rather die (without you & I) by Metronomy  
Defenders RPF  
**Graphic Depictions of Violence** , **Mature** , Allura of Altea/Lance Serrano, Allura of Altea, Lance Serrano, Keith Kogane, Hunk Garrett, Takashi Shirogane, Katie ‘Pidge’ Holt, James Griffin, Ryan Kinkade, Ina Leifsdottir, Nadia Rizavi, Alternative Universe—Fairytales, Major Character Death, Star-Crossed Lovers, Fantastical Elements, author has a phd in literature, and is gonna use it to hurt everyone, sorry Keith fans, I need someone to be King Mark, and from all the social media about the Paladins, he was the best for it

Retelling of the myth of Tristan & Iseult with Lance as Tristan and Allura as Iseult. 

Language: Universal Basic Words: 132,092 Chapters: 13/15 Comments: 1001 Kudos: 1203 Bookmarks: 209 Hits: 70666

 

Circle of Ink by dryanide  
Defenders RPF  
**Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings** , **Explicit** , Allura of Altea/Lance Serrano, Lance Serrano & Ryan Kinkade, Allura of Altea & James Griffin, background James Griffin/Ryan Kinkade, Allura of Altea, Lance Serrano, James Griffin, Ryan Kinkade, Ina Leifsdottir, Nadia Rizavi, Veronica Serrano, Alternative Universe—Model/Fashion Designer, Strangers To Lovers, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, Significant Touches, inappropriate use of measuring tape, Semi-Public Sex, this is really just an excuse to imagine Allura in all the dresses high fashion has designed for her, I know she’s a super serious person, but please god someone convince that woman to do a fashion shoot, please I’m dying over here

The thing he doesn’t say: ‘my entire creative process revolves around your beauty.’

The thing she doesn’t say: ‘I will only wear what you design for me.’

The thing everyone else wants to say: ‘could you two please, maybe, get a fkn room.’

Language: Universal Basic Words: 62,341 Chapters: 7/? Comments: 327 Kudos: 2223 Bookmarks: 291 Hits: 68323

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Lance lets the last of the laugher wheeze out of him with a little _eeeee_ noise that makes Allura look down at him amused and fond. He beams back up at her, content to lay in the uncomfortable little white hospital bed with her hand over his heart like she owns it. Because she does. She studies him for a long, long time. There’s something going on behind her brilliant blue eyes, brewing like a storm threatening to come to shore.

“Who knew Keith had it in him to be funny,” he says in lieu of all the serious and important things they should probably talk about. “Not me.”

Allura quirks a little half smile and rubs her thumb over his breast bone absently. 

“I don’t think he meant to be funny,” she says like she’s not really thinking about it, just talking to hear him respond. Which Lance can understand. It’s been one of those days. Couple of days. Something. “I don’t think he finds any of this funny.”

“Yeah,” Lance agrees easily. “His sense of humor is pretty much permanently mia, poor dude.”

Allura makes a faint noise in the back of her throat before spreading her fingers across his chest with a little head tilt. He goes still under her hand, patient in ways he never thought himself capable of before. She makes that little noise of contemplation again before swinging herself up and over to straddle his hips, both hands planted on his chest.

“Um,” he says because every rational thought he’s got flees him as she stares down at him, hands curling, just a little flex and release of her fingers.

“You scared me,” she murmurs, so quiet he’s not sure he’s meant to hear it. Her fingers dig in a little harder, pinpricks of claws prickle through the thin fabric of the hospital smock, and he goes pliant under her. “Again. You scared me again.”

Lance rests his hands against her hips, gentle and slow and cautious, so she can move or stop him if she wants. She fits her hands against his, tangling her fingers with his over the delicate jut of her hipbones. She rocks against him, ever so slightly, and his breath catches just a little. Everything about her is writ with imperious majesty and so fragile that he’s afraid she’ll shatter under the force of the wrong word. He tightens his grip, very gently, on her hips and she sighs, a little pleased puff of breath.

Something about the wildness in her eyes, the fragility of her expression, the way her hands tremble just a little over his, slots like puzzle pieces clicking together, and he tightens his grip until he’s sure he’ll leave bruises and she sighs again. 

“I’d apologize,” he tells her lowly as she watches him from under her lashes, “but we both know I’d do it again.”

He kinda expects the explosion he can see brewing in her eyes to burst forth at that—braces for the screaming and the crying—but Allura just tightens her hands around his, encouraging him to knead there, right at the starting swell of her ass. He’s not, contrary to popular opinion, a complete idiot. He digs his thumbs into the tight muscles of her low back, making her arch into the touch, before sweeping his hands up along her spine, hissing at the knots he finds there.

Allura plants a hand in the middle of his chest and leans forward until her hair spills around them like a curtain. He runs his hands along her sides, delighting in the long lines of her back, the infinitely delicate line of her spine. She stares down at him, eyes huge and luminous, and something in her expression shifts. 

Lance reaches up to cradle her face as she sweeps down to kiss him, messy at first—lips pressing against the edge of his mouth, along his jaw, nipping down his column of his throat to bite at his collarbones—and then surprisingly sweet and chaste against his mouth. He holds her as she peppers him with little fluttering kisses, content to let her take her time.

“Try,” she murmurs between kisses. She plasters herself against him, slides her hands up his chest to fist them in in his hair, and slides down, a delicious press of her body along his, and kisses him lazy and slow—gestures at odds with her desperate tone. “Promise you’ll try.”

He lets her drop quick little kisses all over his jaw and throat for a little longer before he catches her up in his arms and rolls to pin her underneath him. There’s a brief moment of panic for both of them when this pulls his IV out, making him yelp and her fuss, but his breath goes out of him all at once when Allura fits her mouth against that delicate bead of blood rising from his wrist. Part of him, the asshole bit that’s terrified of emotional honesty and vulnerability, wants to crack a joke about vampires but it’s easily overwhelmed by the rest of him that melts into a desperate mess of affection and extremely confused lust.

Allura licks him delicately and when he surges forward to kiss her, rocking hard enough against her to make her gasp into his mouth, he tastes the not-quite copper tang of his own blood on her lips. 

His dick apparently has not gotten the memo that it should find this gross and strange and not at all sexy and gets hard in about a millisecond. She growls into his mouth, a delicate little sound, and her fingers have dainty claws that nip at him through the thin robe that does absolutely nothing to preserve his modesty. Allura plucks the ties apart with quick little movements that has the fabric slipping off his shoulders and pooling down his arms.

It does very nice things to his ego when she bites her bottom lip as he sits up enough to yank the robe off and toss it gods know where. 

Allura runs her hands along his shoulders and down his arms, pausing for a moment on the tattoo he shares with Ryan. She leans up to press a kiss to Death’s stoic face, gaze heated and teasing and playful all at once. Lance shivers all the way to his toes when she bites him there, little fangs pricking his skin. He kinda wonders about those, actually, he’s pretty sure they aren’t a normal part of her anatomy most days.

She lets him slip a thumb between her lips and gently pull her mouth open. Allows him to run a curious finger along the sharp points of her canines. “These are new,” he says, and his voice is a low, gravely thing he’s a little surprised to hear rumble out of his own throat, “you don’t normally have these.”

Allura wraps her lips around his fingers and suckles for a moment before dragging the sharp edge of one fang along the pad of his thumb. She grins, sharp and sly and secretive, around his fingers, and it makes something ignite inside him like a star going supernova. She moans when he kisses her. He gets a hand into that wild mane of hair and drags her head back to drop a line of biting kisses down her slender throat, each hard enough to raise delicate bruises. 

She whimpers for him, sweet and intoxicating, when he slides a hand up her shirt, to run his fingers across smooth skin and bites along her collarbones the way she’d nibbled along his. She moves with him easily when he tugs at her shirt, slipping over her head to toss it to corners unknown. Allura blushes all the way down her chest and turns her head to the side to watch him from the corners of her eyes, suddenly shy, as he kneels between her legs, shamelessly naked and awash with a hunger that leaves him breathless. 

He pets at her thighs, slow sweeps down the firm muscle, and she shivers under his hands. 

“What do you want?” Lance asks quietly, because he is not going to fuck this up by being an impatient asshole. Allura blinks at him for a moment like it takes her a moment to register the words before giving him a considering look. She leverages herself up on one hand with a little hum of contemplation.

Lance startles for a moment, tries to give her room, but she hooks a hand around back of his neck and pulls herself into his lap, the scratchy fabric of her uniform pants scraping along his thighs. The smile she gives him is so sly and so smug that he can’t help but beam back at her even as he fits his hands to the sweet swell of her ass to pull her snug against him. Allura giggles, the sound so surprising that he blinks at her, and she bites his lower lip, little fangs digging in just enough to send anticipation zipping through him.

“I think I would like my pants off,” she tells him very seriously, “at the very least.”

The sudden bark of laughter that erupts out of him is definitely not sexy and very loud. 

Allura loops her arm around his neck and looks very pleased with herself anyway. He nuzzles at the soft skin of her collarbones before nudging her up, so he can thumb open her pants. There’s a very awkward bit of wiggling around that leaves them both breathless with laughter. She elbows him in the face twice by accident and he bites the soft skin of her inner thigh in retaliation. When her mouth drops open in surprise and her eyes go big and glassy, he bites her again just to watch her squirm.

Allura is more compliant than he’d have expected when he spills her backwards to settle between her thighs. She sighs as he kisses his way down the valley of her breasts, one hand threading through his hair as she presses the other to her mouth like it can keep the thin, sweet sounds of pleasure from slipping out around her fingers. She arches under him when he sucks one nipple into his mouth and rolls it with his tongue, working it until its hard and she’s writhing. He lets go with the very barest scrape of his teeth.

“Oh,” she sighs, “you are good with your mouth.”

He nips the swell of her breast in retaliation and she giggles at him. “You should know by now, Princess,” he scolds, “that I have a very clever mouth.”

Allura makes a face at him, a little moue of displeasure. “It makes me think of James when you call me that,” she says, but it’s not quite a complaint. “When you call me Princess.”

Lance hums a little in the back of his throat because he’d have to be both dead and a liar to deny the idea of the two of them together is a pretty one. He sweeps his hands up her sides to cup the weight of her breasts in both hands. She gives him a sulky, pouting look until he catches both nipples and tugs, gently at first and then harder when she gasps and squirms. 

“He’s got a fixation on your title,” Lance says, just to see her try to keep the train of the conversation while he plucks at her nipples, pausing to roll his tongue over one and then the other. “Think Jamie has a kink?”

“I do not-- _ah!_ \--wish to speak of the Lieutenant right now,” Allura tries to scold, but her voice has gone breathy, right on the edge of a pant. 

“No?” Lance presses down against her, rolls his hips against her to make her wiggle and whine. “Maybe _you_ have a kink,” he suggests, sly and amused when she tries to glare at him. He tilts his head to suck a soft bruise into the tender space behind her ear to make her moan and sigh as he slides his hand down to press against the silky fabric of her panties, already growing warm and damp. He grins against her skin. “You use his title as often as he uses yours.”

“Is this really what you-- _oh_ that! do that—what you want to talk about right now?” she gasps as he rolls his thumb against her, finding a little nub he’s guessing is analogous to a clit and playing with it.

Lance pretends to think the idea over just to watch her squirm and blush and try to sulk. “Well,” he says, drawing out the vowel as he slides her panties to the side stroke two fingers against her. “Jamie _is_ very pretty.”

Allura narrows her eyes at him, ready to bite her full lips and pout adorably when he can see a wicked idea go through her head. “Are you sure it’s the Lieutenant you want to talk about,” she says, sly and insinuating as she runs her hands over his shoulders to cup his face, “and not Ryan?”

The idea of Ryan—heat in his dark eyes, hands pinning Lance down and spreading him wide, voice deep and demanding—hits Lance like a hammer and he stutters for a moment. Allura giggles as Lance hides his face in the crook of her neck. “God _dammit_ ,” he groans. “Warn a person before you try to kill them with hotness, woman.”

She laughs again, delighted, when he blows a raspberry against her neck, squirming in his hands like she could get away. Lance likes the way her voice catches when he settles his weight more firmly against her, keeping her pinned. “If you don’t want me to talk,” he says between sucking kisses along the slender column of her throat, “maybe you should put my mouth to better use.”

He grins when her hands fist in his hair and she pushes him down her body. “That,” she says, voice gone rough and dark, “is an excellent suggestion.”

If he’s totally honest, Lance never really gave much thought to the entire ‘Altean, probably not the same as human junk,’ too focused on _Allura_ to really care. So, he blinks, a little startled, when he gently pulls down her panties to find a pretty thatch of silver curls framing a very human-standard pussy, clit plumped up with her desire and slick.

Allura shifts, tries to close her legs but his hands on her thighs keeps her spread open, the move shy rather than aroused, and he looks up to find her watching him from under her eyelashes. Her expression is so odd on her fine-boned features that it takes him a minute to recognize it as nervousness. Her hands flutter down from his hair to her hips like she wants to hide herself. “Alteans,” she says quietly, voice trembling just a little, “are mono-gendered. I know that’s not, um, normal for most species. So, I-- _oh!_ ”

Lance cuts off her nervous rambling by leaning down to suck her clit into his mouth and press his tongue against it, just to taste the sweet tang of her, before flicking it hard. He’s rewarded with a gasp and sigh, her legs straining against his head. When he slides two fingers into her, slow and steady, and sucks hard on her clit, Allura whines. Crooking his fingers just so and rubbing slow circles makes her hands fly to his hair and clench hard enough to make him see stars. 

She straight up shrieks his name when he flicks his tongue against her clit in time with the press of his fingers. It’s a sound he could hear every minute of every day and never get tired of. Lance finds a pace that makes her hiccup out little moans of pleasure caught right on the knife edge of a sob. Gets her so wet that he swears it’s dripping down his arm. He’s so hard he aches with it, the throb of his cock a counter point to how she clenches around his fingers.

When she presses her hands flat against his head, so she can grind against his face, whimpering his name like she’s forgotten every other word, he thinks he might come untouched.

Lance wishes he could see Allura’s face when her voice dissolves into incoherent pleading, words fracturing into meaningless syllables. He gently scraps his teeth over her clit before lapping at her, cleaning her up as she whines and writhes. Rolling her clit between his fingers as he lazily fucks her with his tongue making her sob, hands plucking at his hair like she doesn’t know if she wants to ride his face to another orgasm or plead oversensitivity. 

The way she begs with broken words for _more_ and _harder_ and _there_ makes something dark and satisfied thrum through his blood and he wants always to hear her voice shattered by pleasure and pleading.

When Allura tightens her grip in his hair until it makes him see stars to drag him back up her sweat slicked body for kiss, Lance thinks for a moment about resisting, about keeping her pinned down and squirming until all she can do is sigh and shake against his mouth, under his hands, and every thought in her head has turned to hazy mush.

But she whimpers his name so sweetly, her eyes shiny with tears and mouth bitten red, that he goes with her little tugs. Lance covers her body as she shakes and kisses her as tenderly as he knows how. A gentle invasion of her mouth, drinking down her whimpering sigh as he steadily strokes her, just enough to keep her warm with pleasure—comfortable but not riding that vicious edge of orgasm.

“You are _very_ good with your mouth,” she sighs as words return to her, lashes fluttering and eyes unfocused. He grins and kisses her, tucking away the memory of her all post-orgasm soft and pliant away for bad days. 

He drags his teeth over the soft skin behind her ear before running his tongue along the slender taper of it and her hands clutch at his shoulders like she needs the anchor. “I told you,” Lance says, almost startled at the way his voice has gone so low and full of gravel, “you can always put my mouth to better uses.”

Allura hums her agreement and stretches underneath him for all the world like a cat in a sunbeam, lazy and boneless. It makes her slide against his cock, slick and hot and Lance is reminded with an abruptness so sharp it’s like a slap that he’s achingly hard and the need to come floods his veins like a drug. Allura shifts again, a sinuous slither of skin against skin, and from her sly, smug look he knows she’s exquisitely aware of what she’s doing.

He groans her name into the crook of her neck and shakes with effort to keep control.

“I think,” Allura says, slow like she’s deliberating on what to do on a lazy Sunday, “that I would like to go riding.”

There’s an innuendo in there but Lance’s brain picks the worst times to be a total dumbass, so he blinks at her in complete incomprehension. “Like, on a hover?”

The expression that flits across Allura’s face is the sort of deeply annoyed that he hasn’t seen since they were back on the Castle before Lotor and clones and the Blade and Keith’s increasing fits of emo-dom. Just as Lance is thinking that he should probably grovel for forgiveness for losing a battle in his ongoing war with his own stupid mouth, Allura’s expression clears. Something between fondness and amusement rests in the crooked turn of her lips.

“On you,” she clarifies, totally unnecessarily Lance’d like to note, because he’d figured that out about two point five seconds after his mouth decided to be a complete idiot. 

Fortunately, Allura doesn’t give his brain the chance to hiccup out any other bits of stupidity. She fits her mouth to his and rolls them neatly, strong thighs keeping him pinned, hands fisted in his hair while she kisses him like she owns every part of him and is glad of it.

Because, and Lance would like to be very clear about this, _she does_.

When she slides her hands along his arms to drag his hands above his head and keep them pinned there, casual display of strength turning the space between his ears into static, he whines into her mouth. She laughs at him, grinds down on his cock until it’s slick and messy from her and his breath has gone to desperate little pants.

“So good for me,” Allura coos, thumbs sweeping along the delicate skin of his inner wrists and he didn’t know that was a sensitive place for him but _holy shit_. She’s warm and wet and makes a mess of his thighs with her desire as she leaves her marks all over his throat and all he can do is whine under her assault.

Lance nearly swallows his tongue when she rears back, glorious with sweat slicked skin and her hair an impossible halo around her, to grasp his cock with one hand. He wraps his hands around the bedframe because she didn’t tell him to move them. When she drags the head of his cock between her slick folds, so hot and _perfect_ , all he can do is whimper her name. Allura watches him with heavy lidded eyes, one hand cupping her own breast—fingers playing with one perky nipple—and the other holding his cock poised between her lips and he kinda wants to die.

“Beg me,” she says, smile sly and smug and the hottest thing that has ever happened to him.

“Allura, fuck, _please_ ,” Lance breathes as his hands tighten on the headboard until it creaks alarmingly under his hands. 

She cocks her head like she doesn’t quite understand the words, her expression mischievous and terrible. She rubs his cock between her folds and he nearly bites through his tongue with the effort it takes him to not buck up into that perfect heat. “Allura,” he groans, “god, fuck fuck fuck you’re gonna kill me, _please_.”

“Please what?” She asks like her thighs weren’t trembling with her own need to sink down and ride him like a race horse. Smiles coquettish like her voice wasn’t a ragged pant with her own want.

“Fuck me,” he breathes, hands flexing on headboard. Allure had put his hands there and he’d break each of his own fingers before he moved them without her permission. “Jesus, saints above, Virgin Mary bless, _please please please_.”

Allura drops a hand to trace his lips. “So good for me,” she sighs as she sinks down onto him. When she leans down to drop tender kisses along his jaw, he groans without thought, “so sweet.”

Lance honestly isn’t sure the sound he makes is even human as she slides down his cock _hot wet perfect_ and he trembles from head to toe with the effort to keep still. He rolls his head back against the pillow, mindless, under the feeling of her all over him—cunt clenched tight around him, skin slick with sweat, mouth moving like sin over his—and pulls at the headboard until it creaks in that particular tone that heralds shattering particle board.

“Slow,” she murmurs against his lips, “go slow.”

It takes him a moment to find the rhythm with her—a steady, controlled roll of his hips against hers to meet her down thrust. The little bed groans and squeaks in a way that he’d be worried about at any other time. But Allura rides him like a queen, skin glowing in the low light, her hands moving over her breasts, hair swaying with every thrust. Lance keeps his hands on the headboard like they’ve been glued there and tries to remember how to breathe around his own desperate desire. 

When Allura finally collapses against him, he catches her reflexively, hands greedy for the feeling of her skin, and she moans against his throat, wanton in all the best ways.

“Faster,” she commands, and he thoughtlessly obeys, lost in the feeling over her moving over him. “Yes, that, _harder_.”

Lance shudders and groans, helpless in the face of her demands. Bucks his hips up, hard and vicious enough to make her dig her nails into his chest and she tosses her glorious hair with a moan. 

It’s then that all of his control shatters and he grips her hips to drag her down to meet his thrust up. Allura collapses onto his chest with a soft, broken wail. He buries a hand in her hair and holds her to his shoulder as he snaps his hips up hard enough to bounce her in his hold.

Allura turns her head enough to bite into the meat of his shoulder, fangs digging in, and he comes at the feeling of her tongue moving across the welling bite mark. Grabs her hips and drags her down as he bucks on a broken off cry. She shivers in his hold, mouth hot and demanding on his as she clenches down around him so hard he can’t breathe for the way she wrings his orgasm out him.

As they lay together, limp and drained, Allura somehow finds the energy to slap his thigh. “Good game,” she giggles, words slurring and indistinct. “Good show.”

“You,” Lance says with as much dignity as he can muster, which could maybe fill a thimble used by pixies, “are no longer allowed to talk to Nadia about sex.”

* * *

#### SCHOMP: IND

 **Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index** [+ Add to Watchlist]

 **2,703.51** CNY +24.40 +0.91%^

……………………………………………. …………………………………………….. …………………………………………………  
OPEN PREV CLOSE 1 YEAR RETURN  
2 , 681 . 90 2 , 679 . 11 -18 . 13%

………………………………………….. …………………………………………….. ………………………………………………….  
YTD RETURN DAY RANGE 52 WEEK RANGE  
-18 . 25% 2 , 674 . 18 – 2 , 703 . 51 2 , 449 . 20 – 3 , 587 . 03

* * *

#### 

Financial

Reporter

_Financial Reporter is the trusted provider of stock market information for private security, force projection, and the targeted dispute resolution industry_

Dow 25,017.44| Nasdaq 7,058.48| S&P 2,690.73| SSE 2,703.51| PEC to AEC 0.87  
-395.78 -1.58% | -219.39 -3.2% |-45.54 -1.69% |+24.40 +0.91%|0.0 0.0%  
[overview] [Market News] [Currencies] [Intergalactic] [Treasury & Bonds]

**Security Contractor Threaten Lawsuit Over Being Shut Out of UEMS-Rebel Talks**

The Blue Suns Corporation stated in a press conference this morning that they would be pursuing legal remedies for the continued refusal of UEMS and Voltron Coalition to open planning discussion to include private security forces. UEMS representatives stated that the cooperation with certain sectors of the industry with the Galra occupation removed that option from the table. The representative from the Voltron Coalition merely laughed until he turned purple. Blue Suns Corporation argues that there is no difference between their cooperation with the Galra invasion and the alleged activities of the so-called Blade of Mamora.

_click here for more_

[originally posted by the Financial Times]

* * *

solarpunknow relogged from anarchistposterchild:

Resist(A)nce:

So I’ve been doing some digging through the financial data available in the archived WCN from pre-invasion and you know what I find very interesting in all the things you can find?

Nothing about the stock history of Blue Suns Corporation, TigerSwan, or Academi EX. _n o t h i n g_

Now you’re sitting there saying ‘Rest(A)nce why do we care about the old stock history of a bunch of has-beens who are trying to whine their way back into the halls of power, shattered as they might be?’ And I will tell you why: because this is the vanguard of the old late-stage capitalist order that nearly fucked everything up for all of us kicking off WWIII and were steering us all towards WWIV until Sendak showed up and gave us someone we hated more than each other. 

Under the cut I will take you to the magical land of Financial Research and Really Hating Capitalist Assholes.

_read more_

*

Zekxtan:

mom @chrono

*

chrono:

[gif: _a 1920s stop animation of a guillotine with the words ‘eat the rich’ over the top_ ]

*

Proud-xenophobe:

lol. This is some sensationalist, pro-alien bullshit. 

*

Eight-Rounds-Rapid:

Since your favorite corporate fascists were the ones supporting Sendak I’m pretty sure that makes you and them the pro-alien fuckers. But continue.

432,191 notes  
Tagged: #antifa, #economic research, #same shit different decade, #no gods, #no masters, #no corporate overlords either

* * *

Pidge doesn’t quite glare when the door to Ina’s room slides open with a barely audible whoosh of displaced air. She’d thought she’d been very clear in her instructions, but her team is frequently a pack of imbeciles. 

“What are yo—oh,” she starts to ask, question dying in her mouth as Keith and James stagger through the door snipping at each other. Keith shoots her a look that she’s never actually seen on his face before—half helpless, half mulish, all covered over by a heavy layer of frustration. James doesn’t even seem to notice she’s in the room as he tries to shake Keith off.

“Ina,” James’ voice is a type of wondering tender that Pidge wouldn’t have thought impossible from him had she not heard it herself. From the startled look Keith gives James even as he stubbornly refuses let go of James, it’s a surprise to him as well.

Ina cocks her head, dainty and birdlike, as she surveys her squadron leader. “You’re hurt,” she says, observation and accusation tangling together, “ _again_.”

James stumbles towards her, still trying to tug free from Keith even as he sways on his feet. Keith snarls silently at him and manhandles him towards a chair. “Well,” James says lightly, as if he weren’t engaged in a game of tug-of-war that would be hilarious to watch if it weren’t for the way that Pidge can see sweat beading along James’ forehead and his skin going clammy and pale. “Well,” he repeats once Keith gets him into a chair. He sneers at Keith’s muttered _and stay there_ , before turning all his attention back to Ina. “Apparently grabbing the sunspear while it was malfunctioning was not the best plan I’ve ever had.”

“No,” Ina agrees easily. Pidge thinks her expression might be sharper than usual as she watches Keith fuss and brood at James, who for his part sneers, snaps, but goes where he’s directed. “It was not.”

There’s an odd moment when Keith gets James settled to his satisfaction and then just, sort of, _hovers_. The gesture is so odd, so unusual for Keith—at least when expressed at anyone who isn’t Shiro—that it makes Pidge pause in her typing, just for a moment. James plants a hand on Keith’s chest and shoves him in Pidge’s general direction, but all it does is rock Keith back a little before he snarls again, but Pidge catches the half-second look of worry.

“I am capable of sitting still without needing medical attention, Kogane,” James says prissily. Keith rolls his eyes but slings himself onto the couch next to Pidge, all long legs and petulance. 

“Debatable,” Keith says from his slouching seat.

James gives him an impossibly flat expression before turning back to Ina as if Keith didn’t exist. 

Their conversation is too low for Pidge to follow without noticeably looking like she’s trying to listen in, so she watches Keith instead. He’s curled in on himself the way she remembers from those first awkward weeks on the Castleship. Arms crossed defensively, mouth turned down in a sulking frown, but there’s a sharpness in the way he watches James and Ina, a type of thoughtfulness like he’s putting together pieces of a puzzle only he knows about.

All of it is very strange.

“Is Shiro still on the bridge?” Pidge asks quietly as Ina reaches out and places two fingers on the back of James’ hand and he turns his hand over to hold hers gently. Keith’s face makes an expression Pidge can’t place as he watches them. She elbows him when he remains silent. Which. Odd. Generally any opportunity to talk about Shiro gets Keith doing his best impression of villain-monologuing. (Which meant more than five words directed at another sentient being who wasn’t, again, Shiro.) “Keith?”

He shoots her a sideways look before going back to studying James like he could stare straight through his skull to find all of James’ secrets. “With Matt,” Keith mutters, matching her low tone. “Matt’s talking him out of taking out all of the Garrison’s high command. I think.”

The idea of _Shiro_ advocating a purge of the upper echelons of UEMS command is so startling it surprises a rough bark of laughter out of Pidge that has her hastily clapping a hand over her mouth. Ina and James both look at her for a moment, expressions a matching sort of flatly bemused, and she gives them what she hopes are repentant eyebrow wiggles while she hiccups out startled little giggles.

“It’s not that funny,” Keith says.

Pidge realizes that the statement is not actually funny in the slightest, but that doesn’t seem to stop the little hiccupping giggles.

“Matt would stop him anyway,” Keith says.

The sheer implausibility of that last statement actually gets her to stop as she stares at Keith open mouthed. He blinks at her.

“You really think my brother would stop him?” Pidge asks. “From doing _anything?_ ”

Keith cocks his head to the side and considers this for a moment. “No,” he decides, like the idea requires any sort of contemplation. “But he would help hide the bodies.”

This sets Pidge off again. She notices, in a vague sort of way, the MFE pair glance at her again, but she’s curled over her laptop giggling in a sort of hysterical release of tension. Keith watches her from the corner of his eyes and his expression seems very pleased with himself. It dawns on her like a fit of inspiration that Keith had just deliberately made her laugh to distract her, or settle her, or some weird form of comfort. She leans back and blows out a big breath.

“At least if Matt does help him hide the bodies,” Pidge says lightly like she hadn’t just had a semi-hysterical break covered over in the form of a giggle fit, “it really will be in graves no one can find.”

* * *

Group Chat: hoe don’t do it

Vero: roll call

ResistanceisButyl: I’ve got Shiro

OneHandLuke: I resent all the implications of that statement.

ResistenceisButyl: and yet you do not disagree with them

LivewareProblem: I’m in the kitchen.

PidgeontheGreenPaladin: stress baking already?

LivewareProblem: You mean: ‘thank you, Hunk, for this baumkuchen you made out of the goodness of your heart and in no way reflects your stress level.’

PidgeontheGreenPaladin: oh! Baumkuchen! You _are_ stressed out.

LivewareProblem: you are an evil little gremlin and I am never baking you anything ever again. 

PidgeontheGreenPaladin: :’(

Vero: focus

nottheblackpaladin(official): Pidge and I have James & Ina

Vero: Lance?

nottheblackpaladin(official): with Allura

Vero: obviously

nottheblackpaladin(official): he seemed fine. Chatty despite being dead for a little bit. Again.

OneHandLuke: Again?

Vero: he died saving Allura once. It’s how Allura figured out she can raise the dead, situation depending.

LivewareProblem: …

Vero: It’s not like she gets a lot of practice at it

LivewareProblem: imma make macaroons 

PidgeontheGreenPaladin: okay so that information did not actually help things

Vero: ?

Vero: did you all … not know?

OneHandLuke: No. We did not.

Vero: hm. A thing for later.

ResistanceisButyl: Get Jamie into a bed if he isn’t already. His meds are gonna wear off soon.

nottheblackpaladin(official): on it.

* * *

IrregularApocalypse reblogged from Eight-Rounds-Rapid:

[Gif 1: _An aesthetically pleasing abstract intro fades into the words_ I’m gonna fight em all _imposed over a close up of a male chest in UEMS fighter fatigues. The camera pulls back to reveal James Griffin smirking at the camera, arrogant and cocky_.]

[Gif 2: _A cycle of Galra fighters flashes for a moment before the words_ a seven nation army couldn’t hold me back _settles over a staticky image of an MFE-Ares plane._ ]

[Gif 3: _A black and white shot of the MFE pilot team flickers behind the fuzzy outline of the words_ and the message coming from my eyes _. The entire image has the feel of old WWII newsreels._ ]

[Gif 4: _Lance Serrano leans down, in close to the camera, one arm slung around Ryan Kinkade’s shoulders. His smirk is sly and predatory as the words_ leave it alone _ripple across the image._.]

Determinist:

I love them. [ 3 of ? MFE-team gif sets](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYFJjwXtsU4).

*

yalltron:

so are we just all assuming that Lance is part of the MFE team now?

*

UnfortunateConflictofEvidence:

That’s what it looks like.

*

devil-you-don’t:

Perfect name & comment combo alert

*

Eight-Rounds-Rapid:

I know this gif set is old af but it hurts me.

531,201 notes  
Tagged: #MFE Team, #Lance Serrano, #gif set, #tw: flashing images, #owowowowow, #this is unfair

* * *

Direct Message

the smart one: I have a question

the evil one: I may have an answer

the smart one: Keith and James, they’re being weird, right?

the evil one: define weird

the smart one: I don’t know. Weird.

the evil one: for the love fuckin—look up ‘blackrom’ in the data files from the Castle. 

the smart one: this is going to be some bullshit, isn’t it?

the evil one: ‘going to be’. Oh, my sweet darling girl.

the smart one: shit.

* * *

Matt flips his communicator off with a quick gesture as he eyes the hard line of Shiro’s shoulders. There’s precious little that their noble Captain dislikes more than not knowing things and Matt’s got the feeling that Shiro’s just realized how far out of the loop he’s been with not just the MFE team—who can be a secretive, close-knit bunch on the best of days—but with both the Blue Paladins who are supposed to be, if Matt has his read on Shiro correct (and he does), open books.

Open books, but with some very hard to spot fine print.

“Today just continues to be a day of revelation,” he says lightly as Shiro paces the length of the bridge. He gets a sharp look that he returns with a sunny smile. 

Matt tosses his communicator and notes idly the way Shiro frowns at it as he tracks its high arc through the air. “But hey!” He continues blithely like he isn’t also stressed as all hell thanks to James’ spectacular bout of suicidal idiocy. “At least you know you weren’t the test case for Allura’s dabbling in necromancy.”

Shiro sputters for a moment and then scrubs a hand over his face. “I didn’t even know about that,” he says quietly without looking at Matt. “I didn’t know he’d,” there’s a tiny pause, “he’d sacrificed himself before.”

Matt watches Shiro for a time as he stares morosely out the bridge windows that show the brilliant curvature of the earth’s southern hemisphere. “I don’t think you were supposed to know,” he says quietly. “Sounds like Keith only found out by accident.”

Shiro’s mouth thins down into a hard line. Wrong thing to say.

“Okay,” Matt says carefully while Shiro shoots him a look that says he knows what Matt’s about and doesn’t appreciate it. Matt ignores the look. “Let’s say you did know that Lance had managed to get himself killed for Allura like a noble idiot—”

“Lance isn’t an idiot,” Shiro interrupts. Matt looks at him for a second, trying to gauge if this a thing Shiro actually thinks or just feels like he ought to say out of vague feelings of loyalty. Shiro’s drawn and irritated expression gives Matt little to work from.

“Sure,” Matt says slowly as Shiro refuses to look at him. “Let’s go with that.”

Shiro frowns harder like he wants to argue but doesn’t really know how. Matt blows out a long breath.

“Taking your rather ridiculous sense of responsibility—no don’t glare at me, I’m right so I’m gonna say it—and putting it to the side, there’s precisely fuck all you could have done about how Lance died the first go around even if you weren’t trapped on the astral plane at the time and your clone running around being a really confused version of you,” Matt says quickly as Shiro starts to look like he’s gonna start arguing. “That was all Lance’s choice and if you gave him the option now, we both know he’d take it again.”

“Why didn’t he, or they, just—”

“Say something?” Matt finishes as Shiro works himself further into an obvious state of annoyed frustration. “That you are going to have to ask your Blue Paladins.” Shiro rolls his eyes expressively at him and Matt shrugs. “If I had to guess, I’m going to go with neither Lance nor Allura thought it was a big deal.”

Shiro blinks at him, slow and somehow sardonic, before arching one pale eyebrow. “Not important?” He echoes softly. “Lance dies, Allura resurrects him, and somehow they don’t think that’s important enough to say something about?”

“Given how Keith reported it back to us, I think it’s safe to say that as long as death doesn’t actually stick none of the paladins are all that concerned with dying as either a possibility or a reality,” Matt says in that same soft sardonic tone.

Shiro stares at him for a moment and then swears soft and filthy for a long, long time.

Matt lets him stomp around the bridge in directionless fury for a while longer; only shifts enough to drag Shiro’s attention back to himself once the tenor of Shiro’s swearing takes a distinctly self- flagellatory turn. 

“Okay enough of that,” he says with a sharp clap of his hands. He blithely ignores Shiro’s warning glower. “You cannot, in fact, control other people’s decisions and holding yourself responsible for other people’s choices is a path that leads to madness, so enough of that.”

“ _Dammit Matthew_ ,” Shiro growls.

“No,” Matt says and gets right up into Shiro’s space. There’s a heady moment when Shiro blinks, suddenly confronted with the fact that Matt is just as tall as he is—not as bulky maybe, but no longer a tiny little nerd with noodle arms—and Shiro backs up. “Right now, you get to listen to me, because I’m right and you’re wrong and I’m done indulging in your theatrics.”

“You aren’t a leader,” Shiro starts, shaking his head like a dog with bone, “you don’t understand.”

“Not a leader?” Matt says softly and Shiro winces. “I’m the senior control for the rebel cells in operation in both this sector and the next sector over, Shirogane. Do you know how many souls that makes me responsible for?”

Shiro holds up his hands, “I didn’t mean—”

“Guess.”

“I don’t know. More than Voltron.”

“Means I’m responsible for about, eennh, something like two brigades worth of people, so that’s like, what? 4 battalions? I think last count that put me as last point of decision making for, I don’t know, thirteen thousand people?” Matt says with a sharp smile. “But that’s just a rough estimate.”

“I didn’t mean,” Shiro says and Matt blows out a breath, interrupting him.

“Look, situation is fundamentally different,” Matt concedes and Shiro gets a look like he wants to argue, wants to use his half-second of temper as another stick to beat himself with, before Matt flaps a dismissive hand at him. “No, really, it is. I don’t personally know each and every one of the fighters in each of the cells. I’d go insane if I did. But I do know about being in command, about being responsible, and at the end of the day even though they are under your command, they make their own decisions and you can’t control that.”

“It’s not just a question of command,” Shiro says softly.

And there it is, Matt thinks to himself. He blows out a slow breath. “You’ve bound up so much of your own identity in being the leader of Voltron you don’t even know where you start, do you?”

Shiro looks down at his hands, making the Altean one do a full 360 turn, and smiles. It’s bitter, tiny thing that breaks parts of Matt’s heart to see. “What else is there?”

“I don’t know,” Matt says, quiet and honest. “What do you want?”

* * *

**r/Military** * posted by u/ChiefBootsMaggee [UEMS Marine Veteran] 24 hours ago

[ **Story/Experience** ]

#### What’s Your Best Story Meeting One of The LTs Crew?

Just looking for fun stories anyone might have of meeting the MFE-pilots (and PLN Lance Serrano) because the media has roughly nine million stories about the political ramifications of their deaths but I feel like we keep forgetting that these were people—kids really—and I’d like to remember them for the people they were.  
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sort by BEST ^  
Shrike [UEMS MFE-Ares Technician] 1232 points * 22 hours ago  
As my flair suggests I spent probably more time around the MFE-Ares planes than is strictly healthy. Spending time around the MFE-Ares means spending time around, you guessed it, their pilots. Now I never really talked to them because I am awkward, awkward s.o.b. but one day I’m sitting on top one of the planes trying figure out why the fkn rear right aileron was being a sticky asshole approaching the problem with my normal finesse and intelligence (swearing like I’d just discovered the concept and hitting the fucking thing with a wrench to see if that would knock loose Altean-protective plating so I could peer at its guts) when I hear the tiniest, shyest little “it gets stuck in the right-wing-stop position for 35 seconds at FE2,” which is an alarming thing to hear at the best of times because _any_ aileron deflection at high speeds—much less the speeds the MFE-Ares hits when it goes from FE1 to FE2—will cause the wing to shift around its torsional axis. There’s only one group of people who ever have to worry about that—the MFE pilots themselves. I look down and, yep,

LTJG Ina Leifsdottir looking back up me cute as fkn button.

I try to do three things all at once 1) un-wedge my wrench from the aileron cover, 2) salute, and 3) stand. 

What I actually succeed in doing because I am, as noted earlier, a fkn idiot is brain myself with my wrench, trip over my own feet and fall off the wing. This is the point where merciful gods would just put me out of my misery, but no LTJG Leifsdottir catches me like I weigh less then half a cupcake and gently cradles my pathetic self like a little lost lamb.

This is also exactly the time my brain decides to ask a nit-pick question that’d been bugging me since I first saw the MFE-Ares retro-fit: namely, how does the quintessence-injection system not fry secondary armament control when they’re sitting right next to each other with minimal shielding because to my dumb and uneducated ass this seems like a Whole Ass Problem. I somehow manage to communicate my distress over this configuration through incoherent word salad and hand gestures while LTJG Leifsdottir checks my head for permanent injury. (Spoiler Alert: I have a major concussion and a fractured skull because I am, again, a fkn idiot) But apparently LTJG Leifsdottir is fluent in Dumbass because she sits there and talks to me until the medics arrive.

She talks to me all the way back to med wards.

She talks to me as the medical team shine lights in my eyes and makes me recite the alphabet backwards (I can’t do that even when I haven’t concussed myself).

She talks to me while they set me up for over-night observation. 

When I wake up the next morning with the mother of all headaches, I find she’s written up our entire conversation in a report, sent it off to PLN Allura of Altea, LT James Griffin, Retrofit Engineer Lead Coran Hieronymus Wimbleton Smythe and cc-ed my dumbass. Which, uh, kind of her?

Then PLN Allura of Altea, _the fucking Princess_ , emails me to ask if I want to be part of the team. Which … _yes_.

So that’s the story of how I hit myself in the head with a wrench, fell off a plane, and somehow LTJG Ina Leifsdottir figured those were sterling recommendations.

I love her. Loved her. Fuck.  
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^Immelmann’s_FokkerM.III [UEMS 86th Airlift Wing] 1036 points * 22 hours ago  
Holy shit. I thought this story was apocrypha.  
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^^ mojave73rd [UEMS FOB Morales] 123 points * 21 hours ago  
Same. It seems like something some try-hard fanboy would write for his waifu  
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^^^ Shrike [UEMS MFE-Ares Technician] 2009 points * 20 hours ago  
Fanperson. But continue.  
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^^^^ mojave73rd [UEMS FOB Morales] 102 points * 18 hours ago  
Ah shit. My bad. ‘It seems like something some try-hard fanperson would write for their waifu.’  
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homoidiotic 1033 points * 18 hours ago  
No flair because I’m a civ, but I heard there was a call for stories about the MFE-Ares team and/or Lance Serrano, and I have one about PLN Lance Serrano and PLN Allura of Altea (that’s how I do this, right? I don’t go here) when they came to help rebuild my city. 

I live in Sevastopol (yeah, _that_ Sevastopol, my poor city, destroyed so many times) and despite being the tiniest fucking thing ever in the grand scheme of things it’s ‘strategically important’ because it’s on a great natural harbor, sits on top of a huge manganese mine (only earth-borne substance that will conduct quintessence, it turns out), and Russians will bitch up a storm if it’s ignored. So, we’re on the top of the list for rebuilding priorities. Like, look my dude don’t come yelling at me, I know its bullshit but that’s how politics go.

Anyway.

Lance and Allura arrive in my city basically for heavily lifting. Lions are way fucking bigger than the media would lead you to believe. _Way_ fucking bigger. (Also having something that can melt things into place is really fucking handy, who knew?) And it turns out that paladins need breaks like everyone else. Shocking, I know. So, a group of us get designated as ‘ambassadors to the paladins’ which mostly means standing around awkwardly while Allura is gorgeous and charming and perfect and no one can remember how to talk without swallowing their tongues and Lance laughs at us. Eventually everyone else gets winnowed away and I somehow win the ‘Least Awkward’ award. (idek how. I am an awkward rabbit, but here we are) and I’m tasked with giving the paladins a tour.

This is where everything goes sideways.

Somehow it’d escaped Lance’s attention that he’s in Sevastopol and he only realizes this when once the entire ‘here go on a tour!’ thing is announced. (Lance, plz) And then he gets super excited because apparently some super old, super dead sniper was in (or from) (or something) Sevastopol. He promptly grabs my hands and bounces like a hyperactive three-year-old and begs to go see all these ‘super famous’ sites I’ve never fucking heard of.

Cue the next several hours of being dragged around my own city like I’ve never seen it being told all about Lyudmila Pavlinchenko who was some sniper from WWII (Lance is not the dude I’d have thought would be interested in ancient history, but here we are) and the Battle of Sevastopol. Like, if my honors mid-war history class doesn’t have an option on WWII key figures I am going to be so pissed because I learned so many random facts.

He dragged us through the cemetery.

He dragged us all over the docks. 

(Also: Allura with her hair blowing in the sea breeze is the prettiest fucking thing and I think I’m maybe gay.)

He dragged us up every. fucking. hill.

At the end of it I’m sweating, Allura is still perfect, I’m still gay, Lance is powered by eldritch forces, and my feet hurt.

And then he turns around and grabs my hands and _thanks me for the tour_.

Like. Boy. You just led me hither and yon over my own damned city, showing me places I never knew existed, and if I don’t pass mid-war history with flying colors, I will be so mad, and you are going to thank _me_. What.

Lance fucking Serrano, people.  
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^ CopyRider [Snake Eater] 1009 points * 5 hours ago  
This does not surprise me. He did pick his username based on Lyudmila Pavlinchenko after all.  
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^Kukushka 212points * 18 hours ago  
This is the cutest fucking thing. OP did you ace mid-war history?  
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^^ homoidiotic 1133 points * 5 hours ago  
Yes  
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Short_Change_Hero [UEMS Airborne] 949 points * 16 hours ago  
So, I jump out of planes for a living, I don’t fly them. Puts me at sort of the wrong end of UEMS command to really interact with the MFE-Ares pilots or LTJG Serrano since their entire job is to stay _in_ their planes and if they are jumping out of those planes, we have a critical failure of strategy. But occasionally the universe aligns, and the grunts and the flyboys are all on the same mission. 

Said mission? Liberating the work camps operated by Galra drones and foot soldiers. Apparently just because the Paladins & the MFE-Ares team blew the fuck out of the fleet in orbit around Earth that didn’t mean these fine Galra soldiers were going to abandon their posts. Or maybe the poor bastards just didn’t have anywhere else to go since we kinda, you know, blew their ride home out of the sky. My sympathies for them only go so far after those first couple of weeks of helping people figure out what was left of their families. Hard shit, man.

Mostly liberating the camps meant showing up and kindly informing the Galra command chief that no really Sendak was quite dead and they were, in fact, the poor bastard in charge of this shitshow now and maybe would they like to resign command? (I had the distinct pleasure of watching LT James Griffin deliver this exact request with these exact words while PLN Kogane looked like he was seriously contemplating braining the Lieutenant with the bullhorn the Lieutenant had scrounged up from who the fuck knows where.) But every once in a while, you’d get some Galra commander who couldn’t unfuck their heads fast enough from the whole ‘victory or death’ mindset they have going and choose the ‘or death’ option.

Which sounds like where this story is going, isn’t it? 

Some heroic tale of where the MFE-Ares team (and LTJG Serrano) were stupendous badasses that saved the day. But that is not where this story is going, because we’ve got a million of those stories. 

No problems remembering that these were a bunch of bad mfs.

But what I want people to remember is that they were _kind_.

Liberating the work camps, you see the worst of people. Not just the worst of the Galra, that we’re pretty equipped to deal with. Honestly, we expect it. Galra commanders deciding ‘fuck it’ and trying to blow up the entire camp rather than surrender. (Mostly when they hit that end of fatalistic, they just ate their own blaster.) Galra drones firing on civilians. Children screaming as some terrified Galra grunt tries to use them as a shield. This, we expect.

We don’t expect the petty cruelty our own exact on the weak, on the humble, the way there are always those of us who will find a way to profit off of someone else’s terror. 

You’d think after fighting three world wars we’d be better about that, but apparently not.

I watched the MFE-Ares team wade into that festering mess of humanity and be unfailingly _kind_. Little kid lost their favorite teddy bear? No problem, LTJG Nadia Rizavi would somehow magic it out of the ether. Main engineering tech has gone catatonic because of the sensory overload of suddenly being free right when we need them to safely disengage the shielding around the main work bunkers? No problem, LTJG Ina Leifsdottir was there to sit with them, sign with them, or use a tablet or find someway to communicate in a manner they could handle. Need someone to walk with the grieving through the mortuary to identify bodies? LTJG Ryan Kinkade somehow had the endless patience and fortitude to do it again and again and _again_. Need someone to sit down and go through reams and reams of Galra paperwork detailing prisoner intake, ‘outtake’ (executions), work ‘capacity’, and all the rest of that shit? LT James Griffin was there unraveling it all until someone switched his coffee out for decaf and the man fell over. Got a head full of rage and awful and misery? LTJG Lance Serrano would find you and talk you around. Not about it, nothing so simple, but just talk and tell stories and terrible jokes until the universe seemed like less of a miserable shitshow we should just burn down and save ourselves some time.

So, when the angels come and ask you what kind of people LT Griffin and his crew were, you tell them they were kind.  
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^^ oh_Sgt_my_Sgt [UEMS Marine] 231 points * 15 hours ago  
This is the type of shit that should get read as their eulogies.  
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^^ The_letter_9 [UEMS Marine] 199 points * 13 hours ago  
Did you mess up your flair and mean to write ‘chaplain’ instead because that was some powerful stuff, father.  
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^^^ Short_Change_Hero [UEMS Airborne] 149 points * 12 hours ago  
Hah. Well before Sendak showed up I was in a seminary.  
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^^^^ Myq Kaplan [UEMS Chaplain (Rabbinate)] 137 points * 10 hours ago  
I would encourage you to consider returning to the seminary. The chaplain command could always use a talent for compassionate exhortation to do good.  
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* * *

“Oh, you’re doing the version with rum,” Pidge says instead of any sort of greeting like a normal human being. Hunk grunts at her rather than reply because apparently neither one of them were going to be winning any awards for human interaction today. He pauses in his whisking as Pidge pops the cork out of the rum and takes a long swig. She meets his judgmental eyebrow with one her own. “It’s been a long day.”

Hunk considers rapping her knuckles with a wooden spoon for getting her germs all over his baking ingredients, but that would mean putting the whisking to one side and timing for baumkuchen is a finicky thing. He scowls at her harder when she takes another swig.

“Don’t you need to be continuously whisking until you get ‘stiff white peaks’ or something,” Pidge says with a little hiccup.

“That’s macaroons,” he replies, but goes back to whisking. “Stop contaminating my ingredients, you little gremlin.”

“Enh,” Pidge says with an expressive shrug. She pops the cork back in bottle and hops up on his nice, clean counter. He frowns at her about that as well, which she meets with an alarmingly sunny smile. “It’s not like this is a lab.”

“No,” Hunk replies, “I’ve seen your labs. This is far more sanitized. Better organized as well.”

“As long as there’s no static electricity, I don’t much care,” Pidge says. Hunk lets that one go because honestly they could squabble for an entire day about what did and did not constitute proper lab procedures. Pidge pulls her feet up onto of the counter and wraps her skinny little arms around them as she watches him.

“Wow, no fighting about lab sanitation,” Pidge observes like she’s not the one driving this conversation.

“Feet off my counters,” he says rather than respond to the obvious provocation. She drops her feet and sulks at him, just a little. He measures out his ingredients with a critical eye before saying, “my kitchen, my rules, and you know the rules.”

“If I am going to bring my problems into your kitchen while you are baking, I have to do my own emotional labor,” Pidge repeats as if by rote. Which it should be, given the number of times he’s made her repeat it. If he had a chalkboard—nasty antiquated things that they are—he’d make her write out the line like a misbehaving child.

“Right,” he says.

Pidge is quiet for a long moment, long enough that he gets his cake pans prepped before she finally asks, soft and unsure: “Lance and us, we’re all friends. Right?”

That gets him to pause while pouring in the batter, making it uneven and lumpy and he has to scramble to get it sorted out. “What’s prompting that question?” He asks rather than any of his initial responses. “Why are you even worrying about that?”

“Ina,” Pidge answers in that same soft, uncertain voice. She sounds like a little girl asking for reassurance and he’s not sure he can give it. Hunk makes a questioning noise as smooths the batter through the cake pan. “When I said Lance was my friend,” she says, staring down at her feet hard, “she made this face like she thought it was wrong, or a mistake, or—or just not true.”

“Everyone does friendship differently,” Hunk hedges. Pidge curls up tighter around herself. “There’s no right way to be friends.”

“Lance, he thinks we’re friends, right?” Pidge asks.

Now there is a question that Hunk is almost entirely certain he’s not qualified to answer. “I think that, uh, Lance doesn’t think we’re not friends.”

Pidge makes a face at him, not at all fooled by the dodge. “He hasn’t been hanging out with you much either, has he?”

“We’ve all been busy,” Hunk says as he pops the first of the cake into the broiler and watches it with a critical eye—in no way refusing to meet Pidge’s incredulous stare. “Turns out he was just as busy as we were, just a, uh, different set of projects.”

“A different _team_ ,” Pidge says with just a touch of bitterness. “I mean,” Pidge hunches up again like a turtle retreating into its shell, “I knew that he was hanging out with them. They were all _over_ his accounts—especially Ryan. I just,” Pidge makes a hand gesture she clearly thinks communicates something and Hunk grunts in response, “I don’t know. I was so busy that didn’t really think about it that much.”

Hunk thinks about Keith going white with fury over James’ sneaky bullshit, thinks about Lance sleeping draped like a puppet with its strings cut over Ryan’s chest, thinks about Allura watching them both with something fond and possessive in her expression, and pulls the first layer out of the broiler. Little more browned than he’d like but still serviceable.

He thinks while he pours the honey in a slow drizzle and Pidge lets him.

“You knew he was on their team,” Hunk says as he smooths the second layer of the cake across the pan. Pidge shifts uncomfortably at his sharp tone.

“I _read_ ,” Pidge retorts, defensive, “though all of James’ reports were ptp encrypted and hacking that would have set off a ton of alarms that I really didn’t want to trip. Besides, it was ptp encrypted to Keith, so, you know,” Pidge shrugs helplessly, “I figured he’d tell us if it was important.”

Hunk pauses as he slides the cake into the broiler for the second browning and gives her a slowly climbing eyebrow. Pidge squirms again. “It took Keith six months to even figure out that Lance was PCA-ed to their team,” Hunk says slowly, “and that’s only _after_ I pointed out something weird was going on with Lance.”

Pidge blinks. Stares at him a little more. Blinks again. “Huh.”

“James might be a sneaky, manipulative sonuvabitch,” Hunk says as he closes the door to the oven a little more firmly than it really needs. “But Keith _isn’t_.”

“His command did just try to kill him,” Pidge says in that dry sort of tone that she thinks is placating when the person being placated is being an idiot. Hunk makes a face at it. “Apparently, his command has been trying to kill him for a while.”

“He could have said something,” Hunk snaps and then goes back to watching the broiler rather than look at her judgmental eyebrow. “He could have.”

“Like Lance could have told us that he’d up and died for Allura before?” Pidge asks softly. 

Hunk pulls the second layer from the broiler and starts the process of drizzling the honey over the second layer. “Or you could have told us that Shiro’d had a massive migraine and panic-attack,” he says a little more tartly than he means. He winces at Pidge’s hurt noise but keeps going. “Or you could have told us that you’d kept a kill-switch program for Shiro’s arm because you’d found fucked up programing in it? Like that?”

Pidge meets his stare with a defiant little chin lift that crumples after about half a second. “Shiro said he was fine,” she says so quietly that he almost doesn’t catch it. “He said not to worry about it and it was _Shiro_.”

Hunk blows out a breath before nudging the rum back over to Pidge. She takes a hard swig and then hiccups a little sadly. 

“Yeah,” Hunk sighs as he starts the third layer, “I don’t think we should take what Shiro says at face value either. He’s worse than a cat about anything he thinks is a weakness. Should have figured that out, like, two weeks into knowing him, but if wishes were horses—”

“Beggars would ride,” Pidge finishes. “Things are bad when we’re the ones complaining about how people aren’t communicating properly.”

That, Hunk thinks to himself wryly, is a nasty bit of truth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one more section of this chapter because it turned into a monster. all these people and their general refusal to communicate like mf-ing adults.


	12. five-sided puzzle palace pt3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Do you ever wonder if Keith has the Bad Ideas Fairy on speed dial? Because I do.

feelingsaboutrobots reblogged from yukikaze:

[image: _An artistically shaded black and white photo of the Garrison anti-terrorism taskforce, with the team staring at the camera with varying degrees of defiance, is overlaid with dignified title card declaring a tidy little playlist._ ]

verylittlegravitas:

[ no more happy endings](https://www.pillowfort.io/posts/214813) an MFE (and Lance ((and Allura))) playlist.

Short Change Hero // Daddy Lessons // Blood//Water—King Kavalier Remix // Boogeyman // Missile // I’m Only Joking // Hellfire // God’s Gonna Cut You Down // Why’d You Bring A Shotgun To The Party // In The Air Tonight // Tell That Devil // White Flag // кукушка // Go to the Light

*

use-of-psychology:

so this is what you’ve been up to

*

verylittlegravitas:

Verity processes by forgetting how to use her shift key, I make playlists, don’t judge.

*  
AdventureClubRemix:

Not what I was expecting, but fuck if that doesn’t fit them.

*

Eight-Rounds-Rapid:

Thanks for making this as bad ass as they were.

232 notes  
Tagged: #MFE pilots, #Lance Serrano, #Allura of Altea, #what are we supposed to do now?

* * *

**r/Military** * posted by u/awkward_penguin [UEMS 2x2 Styker Brigade] 12 hours ago

[ **Article** ]

#### Anyone near Arizona or willing to travel Thursday afternoon? James Griffin died with no known family 

r/Arizona * Posted by u/dagger_thief 23 hours ago

[Image: _an awkward picture of a tiny obituary giving LT James Griffin’s full name, his dates of birth and death, a long list of his deceased brothers proceeding him, and the times of his funeral at a small but respectable funeral home outside Phalt City._ ]  
5.1k Comments Share? +Save !Report >>>

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sort by BEST ^  
Victorious69 [UEMS 101 Airborne] 3235 points * 12 hours ago  
Like fuck we are letting this bad motherfucker go into the beyond without a fucking send off. Fuck all that noise. Sound off. We’re sending him off in style  
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^JustShutUpPlease [Cadet] 1536 points * 10 hours ago  
10-4. I’m coming down from Fargo. Willing to pick up folks on the drive down. dm my miserable ass.  
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AndBoom [UEMS EOD 89D] 2923 points * 9 days ago  
If you want to want to be at Lt Griffin’s funeral and/or wake and don’t have the financial means, DM me. I will make that happen.  
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^ ShootThemLater [Snake Eater] 2009 points * 6 hours ago  
Same  
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^Sky_Shark [UEMS airborne] 13 points * 6 hours ago  
Hooooly mother fucking Christ on a pogo stick, the chosen ones have come in from out of the dark to make this happen. Let’s go, boys, time to send our lieutenant off in style.  
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WhiteFlagNeverGoingUP [Snake Eater] 1009 points * 5 hours ago  
I will be there in full uniform  
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^Kukushka 212points * 6 hours ago  
Take pictures for those of us stuck on the ass end of fucking nowhere?  
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^ WhiteFlagNeverGoingUP [Snake Eater] 133 points * 5 hours ago  
Naturally.  
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^^ CopyRider [Snake Eater] 1 points * 5 hours ago  
RemindMe! 1 week  
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^^ Short_Change_Hero [UEMS airborne] 1 points * 5 hours ago  
RemindMe! 1 week  
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^^ DeathonaPaleHorse [Snake Eater] 1 points * 5 hours ago  
RemindMe! 1 week  
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^^ What-you-running-From [UEMS EOD 89D] 1 points * 5 hours ago  
RemindMe! 1 week  
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* * *

Pain radiates up and down James’ spine in a steady two-four rhythm that moves with his heartbeat and he finds himself breathing in time with it. One breath in on a two count, one long breath out on a four count. Containing the pain underneath his skin, keeping it curled tight to his bones, under his ribs, in his sinew and tendons, takes so much of his attention that he almost doesn’t notice at first where Kogane leads him. Just staggers along in Kogane’s grip like a poorly made marionette with its lines tangled. 

But the room Kogane bustles them into is dark and still and noticeably empty.

“Hey,” he protests. He’s made his wishes clear, he thinks. Lance, Ina, Nadia, Ryan. His team, _his_ , in reverse order from when he’d seen them last. Kogane ignores him in favor of punching the light control. “Hey.”

“Stop,” Kogane growls as he tries to maneuver James into the messy bed that takes up most of the room.

James has got a pretty good idea of where he is, and he is absolutely not going to stop. He gets a thumb into the tender bundle of nerves in Kogane’s shoulder and digs in. “ _Nadia_ ,” he hisses. “You may not give a fuck about your team, but I care about mine.”

The sound Kogane makes is feral and raises all the fine hairs on back of James’ neck. He responds by digging his thumb in harder. “Interesting way of showing it, asshole,” Kogane says, tone deceptively sweet, “since they are all hurt or _nearly dead_ because of you.”

That makes James stumble, guilt and grief and pain tangling together in a tidy ball of emotion that hooks right under his rib cage and threatens to crack it straight open. 

“Me,” he snarls as Kogane neatly hip throws him onto the bed. He gasps at the bounce, pain shrieking up and down his nerves like little lightning flashes: “which one of us couldn’t read a fucking report to save his fucking life? Or, I guess, to save Lance’s life since he’s the one who died. Again. Not that you knew or cared the first time around.”

James tries to leverage himself up and off the bed, ignoring the way his tendons seize and stitches pop free from his skin. Kogane sighs as he plants a hand in the middle of James’ chest and presses him gently into mattress. When James tries to kick him, he gets his leg caught for his efforts and Kogane slides along it to use his weight to pin James down. Which. Huh. There’s a whole line of thought James is just not gonna think. Nope. Kogane fits a thigh between his legs and presses him down, eyes glowing that delicate amber that only makes an appearance in fits of high temper. He presses a forearm down across James’ collarbones ignoring the way it makes James’ breath hitch with pain. 

“Don’t tell me how I care,” Kogane hisses, “you miserable arrogant jackass.”

“Would you even recognize the emotion,” James says as he tries to squirm his way out of Kogane’s hold. “I suppose you must, given your obsession with Shirogane.”

Kogane adjust his grip and uses his weight to negate what little leverage James had found. James sneers at him as Kogane smirks, pleased at having effectively pinned him. “Leave Shiro out of this,” Kogane tells him as he catches James’ fist with one hand and pins it next to his head. “He’s not part of whatever the fuck your problem is with me.”

“I don’t have a problem with you,” James snaps, offended. He tries to get a hand under Kogane’s chin to drive him up and away, but Kogane catches that one too and pins them both above James’ heads. An entire line of thought tries to re-introduce itself, but James firmly closes the door on it. “Or I wouldn’t if you would read a damned report once in your life. But apparently you are too good for grunt work but also too much of a controlling asshole to delegate.”

“What is it with you and _reports_?” Kogane says and sounds so honestly confused that James spends a solid sixty seconds gaping at him before collecting himself enough to knee Kogane in the kidneys as hard as he can. Kogane doesn’t even blink as he glowers down at James. Rude.

“If you would have read your reports you would have known,” James snarls, horrified to hear wetness collecting at the edge of his words as his control rapidly disintegrates. “If you could have been bothered to care outside your little universe of you and fucking Shirogane you would have _been there_ ,” there’s a shriek building along the sharp edges of James’ tone that he just can’t get under control, “I thought you’d at least notice when Lance moved over, but no. Nothing exists for you outside of _Shirogane_ and hang the rest. Distressingly literal for the rest of us in this case.”

James can tell that Kogane follows maybe two words in five of that little rant. While Kogane visibly works to piece that together James tries to yank his wrist free. Kogane tightens his hold. James can feel little pinpricks of claws threatening to piece the delicate skin of his wrists. 

“Why couldn’t you just say something,” Kogane asks, slow like he’s counting out the syllables to control his temper. 

“Because you were being watched,” James grinds out through gritted teeth. There’s a trembling thinness to his voice that he hates, hates the way he sounds drawn too tight and close to snapping. Terror and frustration and months of endless exhaustion bear down on him like a miller’s grind stone until he feels parchment thin and seeping emotions everywhere. 

“Every word you said, every person you talked to, everything and everywhere you were fucking watched!” This comes out as a high, screeching accusation. James’d like to get his emotions under control but he’s so far past his breaking point he might be coming back around to a weird sort of calm. He blows out a breath and tries to glare at Kogane even as he feels wetness collect at the corners of his eyes. “The reports were peer-to-peer encrypted. Only you could open them. They’d show up wrong for anyone else. Details omitted, fudged, whatever. Except for the versions sent to you.”

Kogane rears back and to stare down at him, face blank and eyes huge, but he keeps one hand splayed across James’ chest. One long fingered hand, but it's like hundred-ton rock pinning him to the ocean floor. James jerks his hands free from Kogane’s slack hold and resists the urge to cover his face. Just drops his hands to his sides to glare up at Kogane.

“I told you, you self-absorbed prick, the only way I knew how,” James says with as much dignity as he’s got left. He’s horrified, infuriated, when the wetness at the corners of his eyes spills down the sides of his face. But he glares anyway. “And if you’d cared, then you’d know.”

Kogane drags a thumb along the side of James’ face, along his cheekbone, expression distant and inscrutable. “I care,” he says, whispers, “I care.”

“Then why weren’t you there?” James straight up shrieks, control finally unraveling completely. It comes tearing out of his throat with so much force that he thinks he should be mute in the aftermath, but no, he’s still going, words tumbling out like venom seeping from a wound. “Where were you, hotshot?” he says, shrieks, screams, as Kogane ducks down to fit himself more firmly along James’ body, the weight and warmth of him grounding James even as everything threatens to fly apart. “Where _were_ you?!”

It’s a demand that goes beyond one failed mission or even the long, terrifying months of playing hide-and-seek with an enemy he’d so badly wanted to believe was all in his paranoid head. It’s a demand that rewinds time until he’s standing on the desert sand watching the first of the Galra ships roll in like one long purple wave. Rewinds it until he’s standing breathless next to his plane as his brothers die one by one because Sanda couldn’t see what was right in front of her fucking face. Rewinds it until he’s staring at a map with tiny pockets of humanity picked out in lurid orange thinking that maybe, just maybe, if he was better, if he was _Keith_ then. 

Then.

He wraps his hands around Kogane’s shoulders, gripping tight until there will be bruises in the shape of his fingers, and screams—words tearing his throat apart: “ _Where were you?!_ ”

Kogane shifts until he’s got James tucked up underneath him, face pressed into the crook of Kogane’s neck, covers him with that compact body while James shakes like he’s going to shatter into crackling bits of crystal, jagged and no hope of ever going back together. Fits James into his spaces like he could shield James from the rest of the universe, from the unkind truths of time, and runs a callused hand through James’ hair.

“I’m here now, asshole,” Keith says against his hair. James wants to wail like a child when Keith gently pets along the back of his neck. The contrast of Keith’s gloves and callused fingertips over tender skin sends something sparking through James that he’d rather not investigate too closely. “I’m here now.”

The gentleness threatens to flay James apart, take him to pieces, leave every weakness and broken part of him bare for the world to see. This is a thing he cannot abide. James strains against Kogane’s hold even as his body protests against the abuse, tells him to lay down, be still, just for fucking once let someone take care of him. James fights it like he fights everything else.

Kogane grunts when James bites his shoulder, sinking teeth into the meat of it, but keeps him pinned. James shoves at him, gets his thumbs in tender places and digs in like he could take Keith apart the way he’s unraveling at the seams. 

“Why are you like this?” Keith snarls as he catches James’ wrist as James tries to rabbit punch him in the kidneys. Keith grabs his other hand before James can think to do something with it and pins his hands above his head again. James sneers at him, ignores the way his eyes are wet and his throat raw, and snaps his teeth at Keith until he gets a hand fit over his mouth for his trouble. That idiot train of thought reasserts itself with a vengeance at the feeling of Keith’s gloves over his mouth. The way that Keith holding him down without any sign of effort sends something hot and shuddery jumping through him. Keith studies him, expression weirdly contemplative, before leaning down and biting down on James’ throat right at the pulse point. James’ entire universe hazes out for a moment.

He thinks he whines, something small and pathetic, as his hands spasm in Keith’s hold.

Keith shifts again, moves down his body a little, and bites him again right above his collarbones. Sucks a bruise into the delicate skin there while James writhes in his hold. James' mind goes blank. He wants to fight back, wants to get his hands up that dark shirt and on that pale skin, but Keith’s got him pinned without hope of any leverage. 

“Fuck you,” he gasps out when his voice deigns to work for him again. Keith laughs against his throat, breath hot against his skin, and James has to fight not to squirm embarrassingly under Kogane’s hands. Kogane hums a little under his breath.

“Maybe later,” Keith says, but before James can make sense of that statement Keith is biting a line across James’ collarbones while his hands ruck up the scratchy hospital robe until its bunched under James’ armpits. Keith pets the soft skin between James’ low belly and thigh and James’ breath hitches as heat pools underneath his skin. “But not right now.”

There’s something in the way that Keith moves, hungry and predatory and just a shade too fast, like he’s not giving himself any time to think about his actions that tries to turn a light bulb on in the back of James’ head. There’s a fine tremble to Keith’s hands on James’ body that would translate as nerves in any other person. But this is Keith and James doesn’t think Keith’s ever felt nervous in his entire fucking life. Keith sweeps a hand up James’ ribs to roll one nipple with his thumb and that entire line of thought goes off the rails. James’ body arches into the touch entirely without his permission. He makes a sound that would be a groan if he’d let it out of his mouth.

James knows, in some distant corner of his mind, that he should feel _something_ about being stripped naked in front of Keith, but after having his soul cracked out of its protective shell of order and organization and control, he can’t find it in himself to care. But he absolutely will not lay there pliant. Not for fucking _Keith Kogane_.

He bucks his hips, trying to find the leverage to flip them and Kogane growls a warning low in his throat

When Keith sits up, one hand tugging the flimsy robe that—if James is completely honest—has done little to preserve his modesty, while the other stays spread across his breast bone like a steel bar. James wraps his hands around Keith’s forearm, both of them ignoring how his hands tremble and cling as weak as a kitten’s bite.

The robe comes off him easier than James thinks it ought, ties dangling in a way that suggests something shredded, but Keith is leaning back down into his space to bite at his mouth. James gets a hand into that messy dark hair to yank Keith’s head up. Which. Mistake.

Keith stares at him from inches away, eyes wide and so dark a blue they almost look purple, and there’s something in his expression that James doesn’t know how to decipher. 

“No?” Keith asks, gentle and quiet and if James has to deal with Kogane being soft and sweet to him some part of him will snap clean in half and never go back together again.

Rather than answer (the words tangling together in his mouth, tasting like ashes) James drags Keith back down to him to press their mouths together, to bite Keith’s lower lip until he gasps and rocks in James’ grip, to kiss him to hide the way that James is shattering apart like a mirror after impact.

He thinks Keith knows anyway. 

“Stubborn asshole,” Keith mutters against his mouth. James would say something sarcastic and witty back, but Keith tilts his head so their mouths move slick and messy against each other as he smooths a hand down James’ low belly. The feeling of sharp incisors scraping so lightly over his tongue, worrying gently at his bottom lip, has James clinging desperately. He thinks he likes the feeling of delicate claws drawing obscure, gentle designs across his stomach better than he should. Keith lets him get his hands up Keith’s shirt, sweeping up the hard lines of Keith’s back to grip his shoulders like an anchor.

He half expects Keith to say something vicious and cutting, because that’s the way things tend to move between them, but Keith just growls low and feral. Bites at James’ mouth until he swears there’ll be nothing left but bloody tatters of his lips. Soothes those bites with a sweep of his tongue before moving down James’ body again to suck a bruise right over James’ heart. 

“Mine,” he says, rumbles, growls against James’ chest. James gapes at him like an idiot when Keith wraps one hand around his hip to keep him still, claws prickling over sensitive skin, and fists another in his hair to drag his head back to leave a line bruises up the column of James’ throat. “Mine.”

“Fuck you,” James rasps between pants. There’s something going on behind Keith’s overly bright eyes (eyes that have started to glow ever so slightly) that he’s not got the capacity to figure out, but he knows Keith doesn’t get to say that. Not after. Well. He doesn’t get to say that.

“You don’t get to say that to me,” he hisses as Keith noses behind his ear before sucking a bruise there too. Tries to find the words to fit the hurt inside of. “You don’t get t-- _fuck!_ ”

Keith drags his hand down James’ cock, still wearing those fucking gloves, and the sensation chases all of the thoughts right out of James’ head. “Mine,” Keith murmurs against his throat. He licks a delicate line over James’ pulse point as he strokes James again, soft and sure even as James can feel those little kitten claws move over the delicate flesh of his cock. James bites his tongue to keep from whining, from begging, from letting any of the embarrassing, incriminating things crowding behind his teeth spring free. “Stubborn, arrogant, perfect asshole.”

James presses his head back against the pillow as he arches into the touch, too good and too much after months of aches and low-grade pain. Closes his eyes against the way Keith leaves marks all over his skin like he can wipe away the bruises and cuts and scars with his hands and mouth. Overwhelmed and undone, all James can do is moan breathless with want. Keith hums, thoughtful, when James whimpers out something in the form of his name.

“You’ve always been here,” Keith says low and considering, like he’s putting to words something he’s just figuring out. James would have more sympathy for his soft, wondering tone if it didn’t feel like Keith is taking him apart touch by gentle touch. “Even before Shiro there was you—arrogant and smug and always so fucking perfect.”

“Hate you too,” James says because he doesn’t know what else to say but this seems like a declaration. 

And yeah, _yeah_ , on some level he gets it. There’s always been Keith—even before the Garrison and his team (Ina and Nadia and Ryan and now Lance and the way they take up so much space inside his chest), before the Galra and the MFE-Ares, before he’d ever looked at being a fighter pilot as something he needed to do like he needed air instead of just the thing that was expected of hum. 

There’s always been Keith.

Aloof, untouchable, fucking perfect in everything he ever did without ever trying. A comet blazing past, burning everything in its wake.

Keith laughs, still soft and wondering, as he presses his forehead to James’. “Jackass,” he says as he strokes James’ cock just a little bit too hard, gloves almost a shade too rough, and it makes James shiver down to his toes. He’s pretty sure he’s never gonna be able to look at those gloves without heat sparking under his skin. “Hate you so fucking much. Mine.”

“You still don’t get to say that,” James says, gasps really because the way Keith moves against him—presses him down into the bed as Keith drags the palm of his hand over the head of James’ cock just to make him buck and shudder—steals the breath from him. 

“I do,” Keith croons like he knows how he’s dragging James apart piece by piece. “You were here when I left, and here when I came back, and you’re still. like. this.”

He punctuates each word with a heavy drag of his hand over James’ cock, the rough material of his glove catching over the sensitive head of it and making James’ breath punch out of him with harsh pants. Keith slides against him, heavy and warm and solid, as he presses deceptively soft kisses along the line of James’ jaw. Uses his grip in James’ hair to tilt his head back and to the side to drag his fangs along James’ carotid artery.

“Still smug, still arrogant, still so fucking perfect with everything you do,” Keith murmurs right before he bites James’ earlobe, tugs it gently with sharp as sin fangs, as his hand keeps moving in that slow, languid rhythm. James, much to his complete horror, whines high and needy. “Everyone else changed, treats me different, but you’re still. like. this.”

James gets a hand between them and drags it down Keith’s chest, pausing for a moment roll a nipple between his fingers for the way it makes Keith gasp, breaking that cool façade. Keith curls, just a little, around him. But when James skims his hands low over edge of Keith’s waistband, gets a thumb at the button-fly of his pants, Keith lets go of his cock (James absolutely does not whine at the loss of contact, he does not) grabs both of his wrists in one hand to yank them over his head. 

_Again_. The _asshole._

“No,” Keith says and then laughs like an asshole at James’ growl of protest. “You scared the fuck out of me,” he says, laughter bleeding out of his tone like blood from a sliced artery, so honest it shocks James into pliancy. Keith presses his face into the crook of James’ neck, so he can’t see the face Keith makes as he keeps talking. “You almost died, and it scared me. You’ve always been here, even before Shiro, even when I _wasn’t_ here, and you don’t get to just up and die on me now.”

James tugs at his hands but Keith keeps his wrists locked up tight in one hand as the other moves back to his cock and resumes that languid slide of calloused fingers and gloves over his sensitive skin until James is writhing in near mindlessness. Keith keeps his face pressed to the soft skin of James’ throat, his breath ghosting over every sensitive place there until James has a hard time remembering what they’d been arguing about. Can’t think beyond the way Keith fits a thigh between James’ legs even as he keeps stroking James’ cock lazy and sure.

“You don’t get your blaze of glory yet, _Jamie_ ,” Keith whispers against his throat as James pants and strains, wrists twisting against Keith’s fingers. James thinks he’s going shatter under the slow, languid pleasure Keith stokes inside him like a hearth fire. “We’ve got too much work to do.”

“Wasn’t,” James gasps, dragged back to present by the wet edges to Keith’s voice and the nickname and the way Keith’s fingers move tender and slow over his cock like Keith’s memorizing every vein. “Wasn’t planning on it.”

Keith huddles closer, presses his lips to the pulse point of James’ throat and just breathes there, as he learns how James responds to every touch, every stroke. “Promise me,” he murmurs against James’ throat. “Promise, _Jamie_.”

“Fuck you,” James groans, but they both hear _I promise_. Keith sighs and James can feel the tension shudder out of him. Keith nearly collapses against him, arm and abs and the strength of him finally giving out, hand still moving firm and demanding. James is there to catch him. Pulls Keith into the circle of his arms to kiss him even as Keith drags the orgasm out of him, slow and sweet, and leaves him shaking in the aftermath.

James makes cranky noise, too tired and wrung out from the storm of emotions and the orgasm and the entire fucking day in general, to do much more when Keith wipes his hand off on James’ thigh.

“You ruined my gloves,” Keith says, and it sounds like he’s laughing, just a little. 

It’s enough to get James to open his eyes, bleary and dazed, as Keith stares down at him with an expression that might be fond except it’s Keith. James tries to shrug and his fucked up neural system takes that as code to slide slow and lazy against Keith, which is interesting for how it makes Keith’s pupils dilate. “Your poor life choice,” he says, slurs as his body tries to do a hard shut down despite his determination to stay awake, “not mine.”

“You’re being such a stereotype right now,” Keith says. James complains, words smashed together and incoherent, when Keith starts to move away. “Trust me, you want me to clean this up.”

Keith spreads his hand in front James’ face to prove a point and James blinks at him for a moment before dragging Keith’s hand down to his mouth. Keith’s breath noticeably hitches when James runs his tongue between his fingers across the ruined leather, licks his cum off Keith’s skin slow and lazy, sucks two of Keith’s fingers into his mouth works them clean.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Keith murmurs as he pulls his fingers free. He runs his thumb over James’ bottom lip and James turns into the touch with a sigh. “You’re gonna to kill me.”

James’d like to say he responded with something even remotely intelligent, but the world steadily goes fuzzier around the edges and all he can do is wrap a hand around Keith’s shoulder to pull himself closer to that steady warmth. Keith says something he doesn’t quite catch as sleep crawls over him and drags him into oblivion.

* * *

sequencefairy reblogged from uwutron:

roundab00t:

[img: _a blue and black wolf tilts its head into a gloved giving what must be amazing ear skritches from the look of pure canine bliss. The desert spills out behind the wolf painted in rose gold light, the distant orange of the Garrison’s energy barrier barely visible on the horizon._ ]

[img: _the wolf presses its massive head into a gloved hand, one blue-black ear tilted like a radar behind it to where LCDR Shirogane stands studying a sheer cliff face with a contemplative expression. He’s got climbing gear spread around him like he’s not entirely sure what he’s going to do with it, but the intent is there._ ]

[img: _A gloved hand reaches out for a long-limbed wolf standing on the ruined asphalt for a long-forgotten road. Matt Holt stands a little further on, head-cocked to the side, eyebrows raised as he takes a long swig of a military-issued water bottle. The rising sun spills a pale orange light over the entire scene._ ]

[img: _All that can be seen is a fuzzy sweep of blue and black fur that covers most of the picture and one of PLN Keith Kogane’s eyes, bright and crinkling at the corners with amusement._ ]

I am dealing with things by going through Keith’s feed for cute pictures of his wolf. 

*

hcano:

Is it working?

*

roundab00t:

no

*

Human-and-Proud311:

and of course, you miserable species traitors would go whoring yourselves out all over that half-breed’s account when noble _human_ men and women died for your safety.

*

roundab00t:

You know what? I am just angry enough and tipsy enough to make this a whole ass thing. See me behind the cut, fuckass.

[read more]

*

Zexktan:

@chrono Mooooooommmmm. Get em.

*

uwutron:

oh fuck. Wine mom went _off._ proper grammar and everything

8,923 notes  
Tagged: #Keith Kogane, #keith’s wolf, #smack down, #long post, #The Discourse, #I say this with sarcasm, #human separatists, #and their nonsense

* * *

To: takashi.shirogane.lcdr@mail.mil  
From: colleen.holt.civ@mail.mil  
CC: keith.kogane.pln@mail.mil, veronica.serrano.lcdr@mail.mil  
Subject: re: re: re: care & feeding of MFE pilots

Well. James and Ryan can difficult. (As can Nadia, but mostly only if she’s left to her own devices and near anything she can turn into a practical joke—which is everything, if you were wondering.) Ina is a sweet girl and mostly will content herself to working on her tablet until cleared for heavier lifting. She is merely cautious around men larger than she is while she’s not up to 100%. It’s good Katie has volunteered to watch Ina. But yes, you are right that James and Ryan can be particularly difficult.

Ryan will settle down once he has assured himself his team (which now includes both Lance and Allura, I’m pretty certain. Don’t frown at this email. You are too young for those sorts of wrinkles) are safe and secure. Sometimes you can use Ryan against James, but sometimes they simply work together to flaunt medcom directives. 

James is just difficult. 

Overprotective, too clever for his own good, and a rules lawyer on top of it. Any direct order you give him, he will find a way around. Indirect orders are blithely ignored in favor of whatever it is he wants to do. And he will, if pressed, develop selective deafness, blindness, and amnesia. Sometimes all at once. Best solution I’ve found is to have someone who is willing to literally sit on him if necessary, watch him at all times. 

It sounds like Allura is not much better. Do you want me to come up?

Love,  
Colleen

This document may contain information covered under the Privacy Act, 5 UESC 522(a), and/or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (PL 104-191) and its various implementing regulations and must be protected in accordance with those provisions. Healthcare information is personal and sensitive and must be treated accordingly. If this correspondence contains healthcare information, it is being provided to you after appropriate authorization from the patient or under circumstance that do not require patient authorization. You, the recipient, are obligated to maintain it in a safe, secure, and confidential manner. Redisclosure without additional patient consent or as permitted by law is prohibited. Unauthorized redisclosure or failure to maintain confidentiality subjects you to application of an appropriate sanction. If you have received this correspondence in error, please notify the sender at once and destroy any copies you may have made.

* * *

[thumbnail: _Coran smacks Sal’s back hard enough to make the much taller Galra stagger as Coran gestures grandly towards a steaming plate of unidentifiable mass. It seems entirely composed of eyeballs. Every so often one of them blinks. Paladin Hunk looks like he’s about to start screaming and never stop._ ]

#####  Verpit Sal and Paladin Hunk’s Kitchen Adventures – ft. Senior Engineer Lead Coran Hieronymus Wimbleton Smythe

Verpit Sal & Paladin Hunk Productions  
9, 322, 342 Views

43,922 comments

 **outsidethenormalconstraints – 10 months ago**  
Okay. So. Alteans are just … Like This … good to know.  
1.3k likes ^

 **frankexchangeofviews – 10 months ago**  
I TOLD YOU  
762 likes ^

 **questionablelifechoices – 10 months ago**  
i genuinely can’t tell if he's so pleased because he has made a perfectly acceptable altean meal or if he's reached a brand new god tier of fucking with people  
1.1 likes ^

 **Jammin’ – 10 months ago**  
Definitely fucking with people. Look me in the eyes and tell me that man isn’t fucking with people.  
976 likes ^

 **uwutron – 10 months ago**  
Coran Hieronymus Wimbleton Smythe is the biggest troll I have ever seen in my life and I would die for him  
706 likes 

**distortedsophistry – 9 months ago**  
okay, not to be That Bitch but can we just take a moment to appreciate the _biceps_ on that man? coran is stacked under that mustache okay  
1.1 likes ^

 **feelingsaboutrobots – 9 months ago**  
i know we're all giggling to ourselves about how goofy and sweet Coran is here, but like, i dont think anyone was actually ready for that moment where he took off his jacket and decided cooking in his skin-tight little muscle shirt while flexing was a great idea because i can feel the horny energy simmering in this comment section tonight  
997 likes ^

 **flowersforAres – 9 months ago**  
so at first he looks like the kind of guy that would buy me flowers and pull out my chair and hold my hand and embarrass me with public displays of affection, and that hasnt changed, but deep in my heart i also know he'd be the kind of guy spank me raw and spit in my mouth and call me princess  
877 likes ^

 **vehicroid – 9 months ago**  
Boy howdy was that ever a comment you decided to make there.  
2.9k likes

* * *

There’s a slow, repeated _thunk-thunk_ sound that won’t quit even if Lance whines in the high, piteous manner that normally gets Ryan to roll over and smack the alarm clock into the far wall. It’s like a particularly annoying, distant metronome, but it’s been years since he’s played piano and flailing around at where he thinks the nightstand might be does not produce the desired silence. It does, however, get Allura to slap at him briefly, sleep-hazy and dazed with afterglow, until Lance wakes up enough to peer around blearily for the offending sound.

The heavy _thunk-thunk_ continues against the far wall and Lance’s brain, or the bit that’s way more awake and cognizant than it has any right to be, helpfully informs him it’s probably someone knocking. Which is a really weird when they are living inside a sentient space ship, but whatever.

“Atlas,” Lance croaks. He blinks, swallows several times, and then continues: “Who is it?”

Silence answers him for several long minutes until he sighs.

“Girl,” he says, tired and full of put-upon annoyance, “don’t play. I know you listen in on everything we do, which, I don’t judge. You do you in your voyeurism kink.”

The silence drags out. This time in a distinctly judgmental cast.

Lance clicks his tongue, peeved only quieting himself when Allura shifts and presses her face more firmly against the crook of his neck. He glares up at the ceiling lights and raises an eyebrow. He thinks they flicker a little guiltily.

“ _Girl_ ,” he chides gently.

“She says it’s Hunk,” Allura grumbles against his throat, her breath ghosting over sensitive skin and his dick tries to get interested in the proceedings until he firmly squashes that. Because time and place, penis, time and place.

“She doesn’t have external speakers?” Lance asks, baffled for a moment, “like, is she mute? Talk about a design flaw.”

Allura mumbles something indistinct and cranky before smashing her face against his shoulder and going sleep-limp against him again. Lance thinks she might be drooling, just a little bit, and his heart goes squashy with hopeless affection.

The _thunk-thunk_ of Hunk’s knocking starts up again and Lance sighs. “Atlas?” he asks and looks up at the ceiling again, which is a weird and pointless gesture, but he can’t keep himself from doing it, “can you let him?”

Hunk blinks at him from the suddenly open threshold, covered plate in one hand while the other is raised in mid-knock. Lance gives him a little finger wave. Hunk gives him a complicated look before sighing. “I brought food,” Hunk says a touch too loud—nervous, Lance realizes with a little jolt of surprise, “soup, some steamed veggies, and baumchuken.”

“Oh!” Lance chirps and Allura grunts in a vague tone of complaint until he settles down again. “Baumchuken, you are stressed.”

Hunk makes a face at him. “Everyone says that,” he complains as he sets out a series of little bowls until they cover the entirety of the nightstands and the tiny dresser. Soup, fragrant steamed vegetables, little slices of fruit that look like they’ve been arranged with mathematical precision. “I really wish people would stop saying that.”

Allura snorts against Lance’s shoulder, very quietly, but Lance can feel it and he hides his grin in her hair until he can get his face back under control. “It’s a pretty consistent thing you do,” Lance offers in what he hopes is a conciliatory tone, “the baking when you’re, like, upset—the more upset, the more complicated the baking project. What’s stressing you out, bud?”

Hunk puts the last of the little bowls down with a very firm little _clunk_ of porcelain on whatever weird aluminosilicate the Atlas’ furniture was made out of. Very pretty but feels weird as hell—reflects light funny too.

“Seriously,” Hunk says quietly. “You’re gonna ask that of me? _Seriously._ ”

The nearest of the bowls is just within reach, Lance figures, if he squirms a little. It’s full of sliced strawberries with a faint drizzling of crystalized honey—little bombs of pure glucose and exactly what Allura needs if she’s been up to the shenanigans Lance is pretty sure she’s been up to. Girl needs a minder, he decides, he’ll have to talk to Ryan about it. 

“Yeah?” He says as reaches for the strawberries, fingertips just grazing the bowl. Hunk huffs out a frustrated sigh and hands him the bowl. “Thanks!” Lance chirps, giving Hunk a sunny smile, before prodding Allura right under her low ribs where she’s most sensitive. “Like, not gonna know unless I ask, right?”

“You were _dead_ ,” Hunk snaps, voice loud again, he glares at Lance for a long moment before he scrubs a hand through his hair. “You were dead,” he repeats softer, “I think that’s worth getting upset about.”

“I got better!” Lance says with another sunny grin before prodding Allura a little more firmly, fingers tripping along the ridges of her ribs. When she lifts her head to snarl at him silently, he waves a strawberry slice at her. She frowns at him for a long moment before nipping it out of his hands. 

Hunk stares at him before looking away with a head shake. He looks like he’s just personally had a visitation from angels and they told him everything is impossibly stupid. “And you’re cracking jokes about it. Great. Just great.”

Lance shrugs and waggles another strawberry at Allura. She nips that out of his fingers too, a fang dragging along his fingers in a manner that in absolutely no way sends a little thrill zipping straight down to his cock. “It didn’t stick, so no problems. Right?”

“I can’t tell if you mean that or if you are being an asshole,” Hunk says as Lance feeds Allura another strawberry. The dainty little fangs are still very, very much part of her anatomy and Lance is starting to develop some theories about them. 

“Bold of you to assume I can’t be both,” Lance says without really thinking about it until Allura snorts again. “Wait.”

“No,” Hunk says before Lance can play it off. “I think that was truthful.”

“Man,” Lance whines, “can’t we put off whatever high drama confrontation you’ve got planned? I was dead. That’s exhausting.”

“You’re exhausted,” Allura says as she sits up, silver hair spilling over her shoulders and curling around her breasts. Her left breast sports a beautiful mark in the shape of his teeth and it makes something dark and hot jump through him to see it. “Imagine how _I_ feel. I’m the one who had to heal you all. The Lieutenant and I are going to have words. None of which will be said by him.”

Lance offers her another strawberry and she leans down to take it gently from his fingers. This time the slow slide of her fangs over his fingers is very deliberate. “I told Jamie that was a thing that wasn’t gonna work out well for him,” Lance says, ignoring the way his voice has gone breathy. “The whole ‘not telling you’ thing.”

“You knew,” Hunk says slowly. Lance watches with fascination as Hunk keeps his gaze on the ceiling and his face has gone ruddy with a truly amazing blush, but Hunk stands his ground and refuses to be run out of the room by their antics. Lance’s pretty impressed, honestly. “This entire time you knew that Griffin was keeping everyone in the dark.”

“He told Keith,” Lance says blithely and meets Hunk’s disbelieving stare with another sunny smile even though he can feel it go a little sharp around the edges. “It was in the reports. All of ‘em.”

Allura makes a soft noise like she’s had a sudden epiphany and drags the blanket up around herself, tucking it tight to her body. Lance kinda mourns the glorious and shameless display of her body but there’s no way to have a serious conversation which Lance guesses is a thing that they’re gonna do. Pity. He’d been having some fond thoughts about maybe round two.

“That’s why he kept making comments about me coming to supervise,” Allura says quietly. She rubs a thumb along her lower lip and Lance has to make a conscious effort to not get distracted by that. “It would have brought me within his immediate chain of command.”

“And I think Jamie has a kink,” Lance says lightly, just to see if he can derail things. Allura shoots him a look from under her lashes and he sighs. “But yeah. Jamie was certain that ‘team Voltron’,” Lance can’t help the sarcastic finger quotes, “was under constant watch. I kinda thought he was being a paranoid asshole, but, well.”

Allura cocks her head and studies him. “For how long?”

“How long has Jamie been a paranoid s.o.b?” Lance asks. When Allura nods, he shrugs. “Always? At least since we got back to Earth. But, you know, it’s _Jamie_.”

“You say that like it means something,” Hunk says. When Lance glances over at him the brilliant blush has come down a little now that Allura’s covered up. His ears are still a little red, which is ridiculously cute. 

Lance gives a little aborted shrug but stops before he can really do the whole nonchalant thing, makes himself take the statement seriously instead of getting flippant and dismissive like he wants to be. He hikes himself up the bed a little further. Hunk’s eyes snap back to the ceiling when he gets an eyeful of Lance’s chest. Which. Wow. Allura kinda marked him up. Huh. He gives her a look and she just looks back at him, smug and very pleased with herself. 

“Babe,” he says, trying for scolding but he can’t keep the laughter out his voice. She very studiously considers a little bowl of soup before taking a dainty sip. She raises her eyebrows at him over the edges of the bowl.

“Uh,” Hunk says as he continues to stare at the ceiling like it is the most fascinating thing in the world. “Can we go back to the part where it’s totally normal and expected that Griffin is a paranoid asshole? Like, can we talk about that?”

“He was in command of an elite force of resistance fighters during a military occupation conducted by an overwhelming enemy force,” Lance says dryly. He can see how the change in tone makes Hunk blink with surprise. “It’d be surprising if he _wasn’t_ a paranoid asshole after that.”

“That,” Hunk says to the ceiling, “Is a really good, really obvious, and really depressing point.”

* * *

stickycactus reblogged from sequencefairy:

sneakyfroggos:

[GIF: _Matt Holt hangs lazily from a set of rings, head tipped back and breathing shallowly. He adjusts his grip and swings gently from side to side, pointed feet swaying_ ]

[GIF: _Matt Holt rolls his ankles, exhales, and hoists himself up into an effortless T pose. The camera rotates around him, catching the ripple of his back muscles as he slowly drops back into a hang._ ]

[GIF: _Matt Holt readjusts his grip on the rings until he is leaning back, body held horizontal to the ground. His stomach muscles jump slightly as he holds the position before he swings his legs up and curls them up to his chest. His biceps shift and bunch as he begins a set of front-lever pull ups._ ]

I finally understand, Holt is actually trying to kill us. 

The workout vid he posted is from here.

*

chrono:

@roundab00t this looks relevant to your interests 

*  
roundab00t:

you know, I was about to feel called out, but then I watched the video and

[GIF: _Matt grins and winks at someone off camera as he leisurely pulls himself up into an uneven pull up. Behind and to the left, Ryan Kinkade lifts his shirt to wipe his brow after dropping a set of free weights. A young Galra in patchwork Marmora under-armor walking in the background looks to their left toward both men, stumbles over the leg of a squat rack, and drops their water bottle. They fumble as they scoop it up, nearly kicking it across the gym floor, and jog-walk off screen._ ]

ive honestly never related to someone so much in my life

*

chrono:

Ahahaha, oh poor thing. The shared gym at the garrison must a trying time.

*

sequencefairy:

A part of me feels bad for calling out the baby blade, but I'm really not sure who is thirstier, us or them.

*

stickycactus:

bold of you to assume they aren't one of us

9,349 notes  
Tagged: #me too alien buddy, #me too, #good luck and godspeed, #reblogging this feels and thirsting over him feels like playing russian roulette, #hi Matt if you're seeing this, #please accept the compliment and dont call me out of my shame, #and maybe go easy on those Blades the poor thing looks ready to combust

* * *

#### Discreet Funerals Announced for MFE-Ares Team

With remarkably little fanfare despite the heroic stature of the team, UEMS officials have released the times and locations of small military services for LT James Griffin, LTJG Ryan Kinkade, LTJG Nadia Rizavi, LTJG Lance Serrano, LTJG Ina Leifsdottir. Two of the team—LT James Griffin, LTJG Ina Leifsdottir—died with no listed next of kin. UEMS officials have requested that the public respect the wishes of surviving family members of the MFE-Ares team to have small, private ceremonies. 

Surviving family of LTJG Lance Serrano, LTJG Ryan Kinkade, and LTJG Nadia Rizavi have refused interview requests. Both Earth and intergalactic political leaders have sent their condolences. 

_click here for more_

* * *

It takes a minute for Keith to remember how to breathe as James nips at his fingers sleepily before his eyes finally fall closed, his breath evens out into something slow and steady and un-pained, and his hand slowly loses its grip on Keith’s shoulder. It takes longer to will away the claws and the glow of his eyes. His heart thunders away in his chest like he's sprinted the entire length of a Galra cruiser. Keith watches James’ face for any sign of duplicity but he’s gone soft and pliant in ways he never is awake—it makes something low and dark in Keith’s belly curl in delight to see. The room is very quiet, filled only with the sound of his own erratic heartbeat and James’ slow breathing. Heat still sparks under Keith’s skin, pooling low in his belly, and his breath sounds loud in his own ears. The lights dim even further in that odd way Atlas does sometimes, as if the ship itself knew what its crew needed before they’d even had the chance to realize it. 

Even with only the faint light of the floor runners Keith can see the lurid purple and blue bruises painting James’ skin, the jagged edges of ripped stitches, and over them the deep red marks from Keith’s own teeth biting down hard into those hard lines of muscle. Keith places a thumb on the bruise he’d sucked into the skin above James’ heart and presses until James groans in his sleep, indistinct but needy. James squirms, a sinuous slither of his skin against Keith’s side, when Keith follows that line of bruises up his neck, pressing each one until they change color ever so slightly. James moves with each stroke of Keith’s fingers, sluggish but still so sensitive it sends a thrill up Keith’s spine.

The way James shifts in his uneven dozing to follow Keith’s hands, splaying open and vulnerable in all the ways he fights when he’s awake, feeds the fire flickering along Keith’s spine.

James with his skin sweat-slicked, cum-slicked, covered in the marks Keith has left with his hands and mouth, slack with sleep and sprawled heedlessly naked across Keith’s bed seems like a fever dream. Keith runs a thumb along James’ bottom lip, remembering with nameless heat the way James’d wrapped his lips around Keith’s fingers and sucked his own mess off Keith’s skin. The memory is overwhelming in all the best/worst ways and makes him breathe hard against the way _wanting_ seizes him.

“You are such an asshole,” he whispers even as James manages to curl himself closer—smearing cum and sweat across Keith’s clothes in a way that should make Keith complain but just makes him suck in a shaking breath around the way lust spears straight through him—seeking Keith’s body heat in the cool room. “Such a fucking stereotype.”

But the memory of the way James’d hiccuped out Keith’s name in a fracturing little moan, the way he’d wrapped his arms around Keith’s shoulders to drag him closer as Keith’d worked him over, the way his mouth had moved against Keith’s—all hot, slick, and hungry—burns through Keith. The memory of James shattering to pieces under his hands, all James’ silver words fragmenting into incoherent sounds, will be something Keith remembers with heat and an aching need until the day he dies. He's certain of it.

It’s a need that makes him shove a hand down his pants—the same hand James’d pulled into his mouth and cleaned with lips and tongue and the memory of _that_ makes Keith moan, hot and desperate, until he slaps his other hand over his own mouth. 

His cock is hard and writhing, already slick with pre-cum. The first touch of his fingers across its narrow head, along the rippling ridges down its sides to its fat base, has Keith rolling his head against the pillows with the intensity of the sensation. So much _more_ with the memory of James’ cock in his hand, fat and heavy and hard, and James’ voice breaking into meaningless syllables in his ear. His cock curls between his fingers, nearly thrashing with his need. He bites down on the meat of his palm, fangs nearly piercing through the leather of his gloves. 

James shifts in his sleep, curls a hand over Keith’s low belly, so close to where Keith’s hand works himself that it sends a thrill of terror and anticipation zipping along his nerves. 

It takes less internal deliberation than Keith’d like to admit to slide his hand down further, press his cock back hard against his body until it nearly wraps itself around his wrist as his breath goes stuttering and short, as he slowly slides two fingers along his slit. _God_. He’s so wet even without James touching him—(and what if he’d let James thumb open his fly and work a hand into his boxers, _what if_ )—that he wonders if his jeans are a lost cause. He hiccups out a little shuddering moan at the feeling of the rough leather of his gloves along his sensitive folds. 

James flexes his fingers, just a little dig into the soft skin of Keith’s low belly, and Keith slams two fingers into his slick cunt hard enough to arch his back right off the bed. James grumbles in his sleep, hitching himself closer, and Keith shakes at the feeling of James’ breath hot and wet against the sensitive skin of his collarbones. 

He whines, soft and throbbing, when James rolls enough to sling a leg over Keith’s. Effectively pined to the bed, Keith struggles to remember how to breathe. James shifts against him and smashes his face a little more firmly into the crook of Keith’s neck. The weight and heat of him pressing Keith into the bed sends anticipation and a delicious little frisson of _what if_ singing through his veins.

There isn’t enough room to really get a good angle to work himself to an orgasm. Keith teeters on the edge of too much and not enough. Too much: the way James pins him down with the weight of his body, a heavy heat seeping though Keith’s clothes to sear his skin, James’ breath a steady rhythm in his ear and holy fuck he _wants_. Not enough: his hand moving slow and careful against his cock, fingers dragging in and out of his cunt, his other arm half pinned under James’ body, hand barely smothering the needy noises he can’t help making.

He wants James moving over him the way James had moved under him. Body hard, hands rough and demanding, voice full of perfect silver words that take Keith apart piece by piece. James with his hands in Keith’s hair and his mouth on Keith’s skin. James’ eyes full of that sarcastic fire— _what, hotshot, dripping wet already?_ —and always too sharp. 

He wants James to wake up. To see Keith with his hand trapped in his own pants, cheeks flushed, breath ragged, and drag Keith’s hand away to replace it with his own. Wants James to wake up and sneer: _this obsessive self-reliance, hotshot, demeans both of us—c’mere_.

The idea of James with his hands down Keith’s pants, with his eyes cold and calculating and cataloging each of Keith’s failures for later analysis, sends anticipation and terror singing through Keith’s veins on a double time.

Keith isn’t sure, exactly, what he wants but he wants _something_. He wants _everything_.

He wants James’ cock hard and heavy and perfect splitting him open, sinking into him. He wants James’ teeth on his skin, blunt but demanding, marking him up. He wants James to watch him as an orgasm rolls them both under. He wants James’ hands on his skin; James’ voice ragged in his ear; James’ body hard and lean against his. 

He _wants_ and he knows he’s never gonna get it. 

But James is spilled across Keith’s bed, naked and glorious, breathing slow and content against Keith’s skin, hand kneading the soft skin of Keith’s low belly in his unknown dreams, and Keith _wants_.

Keith bites his lip so hard he’s certain it’s gonna bleed. Palms open his fly even as he keeps moving his other hand in a slow, languid rhythm that drags the palm of his hand against his cock with every stroke of his fingers. He hiccups out a loud moan when the new space lets him find a better angle. James grunts something incoherent in his sleep, brow furrowing, body tensing in a long line against Keith. 

Keith goes deadly quiet, fingers still inside his drenched cunt. 

James stays pressed against him, discontent marring his brow, for a long moment. So long that Keith swears he’s gonna asphyxiate holding his breath. Until James goes slack and still against him as his brow smooths. 

“Asshole,” Keith whispers against James’ hair as James grumbles again. “Knew you wouldn’t wake up.”

And some part of him, some small traitorous and deeply foolish part of him, wishes desperately that James _would_ wake up. That James would blink slow and sleep heavy until he understood what was going on and move his hand, calloused and sure, against Keith’s writhing cock; through the slick folds of his cunt, and crook his fingers hard and mean and demanding until Keith’s writhing and seeing stars.

He’s pretty close to seeing stars as it is. Keith covers his mouth with one hand again and pants hard around his fingers in his mouth as he crooks his fingers in his cunt and imagines it’s James doing it. Presses against the base of his cock so hard his entire universe hazes out and he whines high and throbbing against the sensation. Overwhelmed and so, so stupid.

James frowns in his sleep. Sighs out Keith’s name in a sleep-blurred haze, brow furrowing, fingers digging into tender flesh of Keith’s low belly and Keith shudders in James’ grip. 

“Hush,” Keith croons, groans, as his fingers still plunge between his slick folds. “Husssshhh. Sleep.”

James continues to make little unhappy noises as he drifts close to wakefulness. Keith holds his breath even as arousal zips along his nerves like electrical shocks. James’ fingers flex like they’re searching for a gun grip against Keith’s skin, hard enough to leave bruises along his hipbones, for several long seconds. Keith moves a little and presses a chaste kiss to James’ forehead. Keith holds himself still—so careful and calm, even as his fingers move near silent and so, so wet—until James shudders out a long sigh and goes slack once again.

Keith shifts so he can press his face into James’ hair and breathe in the scent of him, heavy with sleep and so warm, and feel the heavy press of his body—naked, bruised, and still glorious in the low light of Keith’s room—all along Keith’s side. He wants James to wake up and replace Keith’s hands with his own. He’s terrified James will wake up and recoil at how manifestly _not_ human Keith is. 

Keith wants, and he wants, and he _wants_ , and he’s not gonna get it any more than he’s gotten _Shiro_ and that rips him into tiny pieces. Keith drags his free hand up James’ body, the angle awkward and strange, just to feel the sweep of soft skin over lean muscle under his fingers. James sighs and stretches with each gentle touch—pliant in his sleep the way he never is awake. Keith can’t help but wonder if Shiro would be soft with him, easy for him, counter-point to the way James has to fight everything.

The idea of having James and Shiro both—two sides of the same aching want that burns in Keith’s veins, under Keith’s skin, leaves something dark and possessive curling through any time he thinks of them for too long—is enough to send him tipping over the edge of an orgasm gasping their names against the leather of his gloves as he sinks three fingers into himself to the farthest knuckle and shakes there. James sighs in his sleep, still sweetly sleep-easy. He pulls at Keith’s hips until Keith lets himself curl around James and shudder his way through the aftershocks of his orgasm.

* * *

To: keith.kogane.pln@mail.mil  
From: kolivan.clanRaik.bm@mail.mil  
CC: krolia.clanRaik.bm@mail.mil  
Subject: re: blade training

kit,

Your concern for the training regime of the new blade recruits is noted and appreciated, but not required. While the fledglings will mark your absence, they are aware of your other duties and must become accustomed to changes in their daily routines. Now is time for you to focus your attentions upon your kismesiss and the needs of your in-clade. 

I have spoken, discreetly, with Cmdr Holt regarding your kismesiss’ suspicions and will provide support as needed. 

\--Kolivan

* * *

To: keith.kogane.pln@mail.mil  
From: krolia.clanRaik.bm@mail.mil  
CC: kolivan.clanRaik.bm@mail.mil  
Subject: re: blade training

Keith,

Don’t run. Protect your in-clade.

\--Krolia

* * *

shrike reblogged this from bicon-voltron:

[img: _a picture of questionable artistic quality depicting a heavily graffiti-ed wall in heavily saturated tones serves as the title card for a little playlist._ ]

verylittlegravitas:

[ Azimuth Check](https://www.pillowfort.io/posts/211913). A playlist for LT James Griffin

99 Problems // Raise Hell // Power Over Me // Fire // Bury Me Face Down // Baby // Drumming Song (Jack Beats Remix) // God's Gonna Cut You Down // Won't Go Down Easy // Dogs of War // Come Together // Dark Nights // Icky Thump

*

useofpsychology:

wow. You are upset.

*

verylittlegravitas:

the whole thing is incredibly stressful and shitty

*

awkward_rabbit:

how many versions of ‘God’s Gonna Cut You Down’ do you have?

*

verylittlegravitas:

too many

*

shrike:

To be fair, there is no bad version of that song.

781 notes  
Tagged: #Defenders, #playlist, #MFE-Ares team, #in memoriam

* * *

Matt watches as Shiro frowns at his communicator, worrying at his bottom lip the way he does when he’s forgotten that anyone is in the room with him. True to form, when Shiro looks up and catches Matt watching him with interest his expression smooths over. Matt rolls his eyes at him before wandering over to lean against the main bridge console for the Atlas. Shiro breathes out a massive sigh that shakes through him like an earthquake when Matt presses his shoulder against Shiro’s.

“Mom basically tell you what I’ve been telling you?” Matt asks quietly.

Shiro makes a face. “I don’t see why Lieutenant Griffin has to make everything so difficult by refusing to accept help.”

Matt stares at him for a moment. “I just want you take in for a moment the amazing and frankly astounding irony of that statement before we continue this conversation.”

“I’m not this bad.”

“Correct! You are worse.”

“I feel like that is a gross overstatement of things.”

“It is an unbelievable understatement, trust me.”

“Your repeated and flagrant tendency to twist words and logic to fitting your particular needs at any moment makes trust difficult.”

Matt rabbit punches Shiro in the kidneys and Shiro curls away from him laughing. “I don’t lie,” Matt says in his defense (because no one else will defend him on this one, he knows), “I just prefer an edited rendition of facts upon occasion.”

Shiro makes a small disagreeing sound before scooting further down the console out of easy punching range. “I’m going to remember that phrase next time I have to file a report.”

“You can always take lessons from Jamie.”

The laugh that Shiro barks out is rough and seems to surprise him. “It’s the shamelessness that gets me,” Shiro says after a second. “It’s like it doesn’t even cross his mind to actually reach out to someone before just throwing himself into danger.”

“Again. Irony.”

“I don’t jeopardize my team,” Shiro says sharply.

Matt shrugs a little. “I think our young Lieutenant would argue that he trusts his team to have his back.”

Shiro looks stung. “I trust my team.” He scowls when Matt raises his eyebrows. “They’re just so young.”

“And you at the great temporal distance of, what, maybe five years are so much older and more grizzled,” Matt says with just a touch of sardonic sharpness. Shiro gives him a mutinous look but doesn’t argue. Matt can’t suppress the sigh that bubbles out of him. “You’ve got to stop acting like you’re on a short timer, Shiro. It’s killing the people who love you and fucking up your relationships,” Shiro opens his mouth like he’s gonna argue and Matt makes a sharp gesture with the flat of his hand, “no, I’m right and you know it.”

Shiro makes a disgusted noise and stomps away from him for a moment before spinning on one heel to glower at Matt. There’s a faintly guilty cast to Shiro’s expression and Matt knows him well enough to catch it. “How,” Shiro bites out. “Enlighten me, Doctor Holt.”

“That’s my mother,” Matt says mildly. “I’m not that type of doctor.” But he shoves himself off the bridge console to stalk his way up to Shiro. It’s gratifying the way he can watch Shiro realize they are the same height now. “And you want to know how, Captain, my Captain?” Matt asks low and deceptively sweet. Shiro swallows hard as Matt gets right into his space. “Because you insist everyone be open and vulnerable with you,” Matt murmurs so quietly Shiro’s eyelashes flicker at the suddenly intimate air. “You demand they tell you all their problems, all their hidden insecurities, all their weaknesses—”

“I’m their leader,” Shiro hisses back, pushing into Matt’s space just a little. “I can’t protect them if they don’t talk to me.”

Matt lets Shiro try to crowd against him, internally delighted at the moment when Shiro realizes that he can’t use his bulk to press Matt backwards. “And yet you don’t talk to them,” Matt says as gently as he knows how even as Shiro tries to use the scant half-inch of height he’s got on Matt to glower down at him, “You won’t trust them to have your back. You don’t trust them with your weaknesses.”

Shiro backs away from him as suddenly as he’d tried to crowd into Matt’s space. “They don’t need that worry.”

“And if they want it? If they want that worry?” Matt asks in that same gentle tone. “You say you need to know to protect them, but who protects you?”

“This is a thing for you today,” Shiro says rather than answering. “Playing amateur psychologist at me. First about who I am if not the leader of Voltron and now this.”

“You _are_ the leader of Voltron,” Matt tells him seriously. Shiro can’t hold his gaze, his eyes slipping away to the floor with a frown. “But that’s not all you are—it can’t be.”

“Keith is—”

“Keith would rip out his own heart and hand it over to you if he thought for half a second that’s what you wanted,” Matt interjects. “He leads them because he thinks you want him to. That’s it.”

“He’s good at it,” Shiro says in the tone of a man grasping at straws and knows it.

“That is a statement of questionable veracity and we both know it.”

“ _Dammit_ , Matt.”

“I’ve let you muddle around in this mess for long enough,” Matt says while Shiro scowls at him. “I thought you might figure it out on your own, but you seem just as inclined to sulk in self-flagellating angst as Keith and it’s exhausting.” 

“I am not sulking.”

“It’s cute how you think you can lie to me. Next you’re gonna tell me you aren’t in love with Keith and haven't been since at least the first time he saved your life—and yeah I know the story, Katie told me all about how you decided to run around like a suicidal idiot with a quintessence infected wound. Don’t do that again, by the way, I’m too young to have all the gray hair you’re gonna give me.”

They stand there staring at each other after Matt’s little rant. He’s pretty pleased he got the entire thing out on one breath.

“I give you gray hair,” Shiro says—trust him to latch onto exactly the wrong part of everything that Matt had to say. “Which one of us jumps out of perfectly good space ships again? And it doesn’t matter. He called me his brother.”

Matt lets his eyebrow climb towards his hairline. “You are not this stupid, Shirogane,” Matt says slowly as Shiro fidgets. “Do not act this stupid.”

Shiro heaves a frustrated sigh and runs a hand through his hair. “What do you want me to do, Matt? Just tell me that.”

“What I want,” Matt says, carefully enunciating each word. “Is for you to communicate like a motherfucking adult. That’s what I want.”

* * *

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When the last of the afterglow slowly seeps from his veins, Keith slowly drags his hand out of his pants, shivering as his fingers slide through his slick and over his slowly curling cock. He smears his hand against the sheets, trying to get his slick and cum off his fingers, until he gives up and sucks his own mess off his hand. The memory of James’ tongue working at the fabric of Keith’s glove, curling around his fingers, rockets through Keith so hard he gasps at it.

James sighs beside him, face still pressed against Keith’s shoulder, fingers clinging to Keith’s hip. 

The smell of sex and arousal and James’ particular scent that pings something deep in feral in the back of Keith’s head—the place where something dark and greedily possessive lives, always fast to come roaring to the surface at each of James’ provocations—hangs heavy in the air. Keith tries not to breathe too deeply. Fails. Buries his face in his hands, ignoring James’ grumbled, incoherent complaint, and nearly suffocates in the smell of his own cum mingling with James’ as they dry into the leather. The smell will never come out now.

Keith jerks his hands away from his face and stares at his hands. _What_ is he even _doing?_

James mutters something in his sleep that could almost be Keith’s name, syllables a slurred mess, but close. Keith stares at him from inches away. The way James’ eyes had screwed shut and his mouth had rounded in a surprised gasp of pleasure when he came runs through Keith’s mind on repeat. Now James is slack with sleep, face smoothed out into a gentle expression of peace, and so warm against Keith’s side that he thinks James might be running a fever. Keith remembers the shape of James’ mouth around _hate you too_ like James could ever mean that the way Keith means it—full of a dark burn of something a little too feral to be human.

Kolivan’d put a name to it that Keith didn’t know. His mother acted like it was something he should know like he ever knew anything about anything. Just another way that his fucked up DNA managed to fuck him over. 

He shivers, a full body spasm, when James huffs a sigh against his skin—breath hot and damp.

Clearly, he has lost his godsdamned mind. Stress finally got to him until he gave into every impulse he’s ever felt staring at James’ unfairly attractive, smug face. He’s going to remember forever the way James had shuddered underneath and moaned Keith’s name when he came. He’s going live with the way James had reached up and dragged Keith’s hand into his mouth to clean his own cum off Keith’s fingers with his _tongue_. Keith’s not sure he can live with that memory. He’s not sure how he lived without it. 

He’ll also remember forever the way James’ expression had just shattered when he’d screamed _where were you_ like Keith’d ever been someone that someone like James—perfect, arrogant, infuriating James—could miss. Could hold up on a pedestal like Keith could solve problems rather than just create them. He’ll remember forever the way James’d clung to him like James was going to shake to pieces as the words ripped out of James’ throat like knives. He doesn’t know what to do with those memories, but he has them now.

He watches as James drifts into a deeper sleep. James’ skin still painted in vicious blue-black bruises as dark as James’ eyes, still marked with shiny scars that Keith doesn’t know the history of, still carrying the marks of Keith’s hands and mouth and _wanting_. 

There’s not a chance in hell that James wants him the way Keith wants James—wants to crack open James’ ribs to scoop his heart out to see its secrets, wants to dig his thumbs into James’ soft spaces until all the rage and venom James pretends isn’t there runs from James’ veins like wine—but Keith’s got these memories now. He’ll be _fucked_ before he ever gives them up.

Catching the edge of one glove with his teeth—refusing to think about how it tastes like their cum mingled together and how that sends a throbbing bolt of pure need straight through him—Keith pulls his gloves off. 

He knows how to live with wanting something he can’t have. He knows how to live close enough to touch, close enough to breathe in the scent, and not have. He can do this.

Trying to keep as still as possible, to keep James from clawing back out of the deep doze he’s drifted into, Keith finger crawls his tablet off the nightstand and into his grip. He thumbs it open, wincing at the sudden glare from the screen until he gets it set to Galra night standard, and pops open the first in the long, long line of reports James had sent him. Reports spanning months and months and _months_. The sheer number of them boggling him. 

He gets half way down the first page before he closes his eyes, resting the tablet against his forehead, and breathes through the familiar surge of frustration.

“Do you get paid by the word?” He asks James, who continues to sleep deep and dreamless beside him. “Is that why you write like this?”

Keith pops open a dictionary program after a little internal debate. But no one, absolutely fucking no one, uses the word ‘disingenuous’ on the regular and anyone would have to look it up. That’s what he tells himself. It takes him all the way through the next two pages before he has to pull the dictionary program open again. 

“You are an asshole,” Keith mutters against James’ hair as the dictionary program spits a bunch of words in French at him. “ _Retraite en échiquier_ my ass. Why didn’t you just say ‘a staggered retreat’? Oh, my fucking god. I hate you so much.”

He reads a section and then, with a near silent groan, reads it again when he realizes he doesn’t remember a good godsdamned fucking thing it said. Reads it again. Curses James and everything associated with him. Reads it again. Mouths a sentence slowly as he works through the tangled grammar and random citations—he doesn’t know who the fuck Maria von Clausewitz is and doesn’t know why he should care—until they makes some sort of sense inside his head. 

It feels like Keith’s brain is going to leak out his ears and his eyes burn with that telltale ache that comes from reading things that make him struggle and wish he could replace part of his brain with Matt’s or, he guesses, James’. But for reasons that fucking escape Keith at the moment James seems to think that Keith can make sense of the mess of words and jargon and phrases. 

So. 

So that’s what Keith’s gonna do.

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* * *

Shiro glares at Matt for a long moment, ignoring the way his eyes prickle with the type of burning that comes from sudden and overwhelming emotion, before a little blinking light catches his attention.

“Did you schedule a rendezvous with someone?” He asks Matt.

“Don’t try to change the subject, Shirogane,” Matt snaps, sharper than usual, before doing what would be a comical double take at the little indicator light. “No,” Matt says, slow and thoughtful. “I’d tell you anyway.”

Matt shifts so Shiro can fit himself next to Matt, pressing shoulder to shoulder, as they both stare at the little indicator light of a docking ship. It makes no fucking sense. When he sends a question at Atlas she presses back a sense of confused concern.

“Atlas says they have access codes, but she doesn’t recognize who they are,” he relays to Matt, who gives him a skeptical eyebrow.

“Do we have eyes on that docking bay?” Matt asks, his voice going that weirdly flat he gets when considering enemy actions. Shiro spares a moment to think a very unfriendly, very violent thought at Admiral Udina.

“Yes,” he answers as a screen flickers to life before them.

Docking bay 4, a tiny and generally forgotten bay only used for the delivery of perishable goods while in low atmosphere, spreads before them. The odd bird’s eye view of the bay from the security camera fills Shiro with an odd sense of vertigo as Atlas presents the same view, slightly altered, inside his head.

A small craft, non-descripted and unarmored but heavily shielded, slides into the bay.

He can feel the aluminosilicate of the bridge console buckle with a warning creak under his Altean hand as a small squad of sleek ghosts disembark with practiced precision. The laser sights of their rifles momentarily blinding Atlas’ security cameras. They are a team of fifteen professional killers outfitted with tools designed for elegant and silent murder. 

As the last of the team move down the ramp of their transport craft, they carefully guide a slim woman wearing a furious expression with her wrists bound tightly before her.

“That’s my mother,” Matt says softly. “Shiro. _They have my mother_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yay! _m u r d e r!_
> 
> I haven't hurt anyone in nearly 30k words. I'm overdue.


	13. terminarch

Something deep in James’ hindbrain wakes up with a start.

There’s a feeling of _wrongdistortedunsafe_ that sends a jolt of pure adrenaline through his entire system. For a half-second he trembles, head to fucking toe, as his fight-or-flight response kicks into high gear. It takes all of his self-control not to come up swinging. Instead he continues to breathe slow and steady as he tries to take stock of his situation without opening his eyes or moving from his slack sprawl across half the bed. 

Keith is a deadweight next to him—warm and solid and compact in ways his asshole brain helpfully reminds him of with a set of impressively tactile memories. The room is dark with a single point of light burning through his closed eyelids to the bottom left. An open tablet probably, Keith having a rare fit of attempted productivity and then falling asleep halfway through. Typical. James’d find that funny at any other time but the sense that _something_ is wrong crawls down his spine like spider legs.

He catches the half-heartbeat when Keith’s breath stutters before evening back out into a smooth, steady rhythm again. 

Waking up and then faking sleep, same as James.

The room is warm and dark and smells like Keith’s skin and sex, which are all things that would be deeply alarming under normal circumstances, but not the sort of alarming that sets every one of his senses on high, shrieking alert. The slow air currents of the room feel wrong, like a river changing steams, and they prickle across his bare skin in a way that makes him think of ripped knuckles and bloody teeth. James waits for the sound of furtive movement, for the hushed noise of masked breathing, for any of the little telltale signs of a knife in the dark.

It doesn’t settle his nerves any when he hears nothing.

Keith moves under his hand, a subtle bunch and stretch of his abs, as Keith assesses the situation. James can _feel_ the moment when Keith decides the situation is wrong in ways that have nothing to do reason and everything to do with the deep lizard part of the brain where the PTSD lives.

Fuck all the shrinks that say PTSD is a maladaptive trait. Shit keeps his ass alive.

James presses his fingers into the soft skin right above Keith’s hip. The way Keith shivers under his touch and goes completely still lets James know that he’s got Keith’s complete and undivided attention. There’s movement in the hallway outside Keith’s door—James can sense it in the deep places of his bones where the paranoia sits like a gargoyle—the subtle change in pressure that shouldn’t register, but somehow James can sense it like he’s got a sixth sense attuned to bodies in the shadows that hold the promise of pain and violence in their sinews. 

He presses two fingers down into that silky skin, listens to Keith’s breath go short, pauses and then presses three fingers twice hard. 

James is pretty sure that Keith doesn’t know Morse code from a corpse in a ditch, but even Keith should be able to catch that message. Keith sighs out a breath—long and slow and somehow deeply frustrated.

Then room explodes into movement.

Pain runs up James’ side in nasty little spikes when he hits the floor hard as he rolls off the bed and sweeps out with one leg to take down a sleek ghost fitted in noise-dampening chameleon gear, the red infrared sights glittering strangely in the reflected light of Keith’s little tablet. Two short, sharp punches straight into those bug-eyed optics produces a satisfying crunch as delicate electronics shatter under his fist. The would-be assassin shrieks short and sharp as James drives the broken remains of those expensive toys straight through the man’s eye sockets.

Blood seeps from the ruins of the operative’s mask and James gives himself a second to enjoy a grim sense of satisfaction. His body reminds him with brutal intensity that he’s wounded—stitches ripped, and neural architecture jacked to fuck. He mentally tells it to fuck off, he’s busy. Another ghost swings the blunt nose of a Chekov shotgun inline with James’ forehead, the metal glinting dully, and James spares a moment to wonder if this is where he dies. Kneeling at the edge of Keith’s Kogane's bed, naked, beaten and bloodied, and angrier than the seven hells below.

Keith hits the operative with enough force that man bounces off the far wall and slumps to the floor in a daze. James blinks as Keith reaches down with those delicate, itty-bitty kitten claws and rips out the man’s unprotected throat. Design flaw in their chameleon armor, James reflects distantly, to leave such a sensitive place undefended. The arterial spray paints Keith’s hands a deep red. James blinks again as Keith flicks the blood from his fingers with a little dismissive gesture.

He’s had those claws on his throat. He’s had them on his _cock_. He might need to reassess some things about himself in the not too distant future.

Fortunately, he’s saved from an uncomfortable round of introspection by two more sleek professional killers sweeping into the room—low to high—with well-trained precision. The noise that rumbles up out of Keith’s chest is vicious and feral and James has a memory of that sound right up against his ear that honestly worries his dick. He drags one of the dropped shotguns up and fires from the hip, taking out a man at the knees. The resulting scream is high, wet, and so, so sweet. 

Keith huffs out a sound that might be a laugh as he lobs the limp corpse of the operative he’d ripped the throat out of at the remaining ghost where they stand painted in eerie pale red by Atlas’ emergency lights.

The ghost squawks in a really unfortunate manner and goes down, pinned by the still bleeding body, fancy gun flying, tactical gear knocked askew.

James takes the feeling that wants to bubble along in his veins as Keith stalks to the doorway, all rolling hips and mean swagger, and strangles it stillborn. Keith plants a foot in the middle of the man’s chest and leans down, predatory grace and the promise of violence writ into the compact lines of his body. Cocking his head to the side, slow and faux-thoughtful, Keith presses down heavily. The sharp crackling sound of shattering bone fills the air. The groan that bubbles out from the operative’s lips is long and wet. Keith reaches down and carefully plucks vicious blades from their hands and tosses them to James without a backward glance.

“How,” Keith asks gently as he catches a wild swing from the pinned operative before shifting to press down with even more weight to make them gasp in pain, “did you get on board Shiro’s ship?”

That, James thinks as he files the statement away, is a really interesting way of phrasing things.

“You are going to die,” the ghost grinds out, voice echoing queerly as their chameleon gear attempts to distort the sound, and Keith’s eyes get that kitty-cat glitter, “you are going to die slow.”

James hauls himself to feet, his neural architecture finally figuring out up from down, and staggers over to stare down at the ghost in their broken armour. The red-bug eyes of the infrared optics give the operative a surreal quality. James points the shotgun at their forehead, letting it rest softly against the silvered black metal, and smiles gently. “Let’s try that again,” he suggests quietly, “you seem confused as to the question asked.”

“All of you disgusting alien fuckers are going to die.”

James clicks his tongue as he racks the shotgun—it makes a very satisfying _ch-thunk_ noise as both barrels chamber. “Still not answering the right question.”

“You are a disgrace to your specie—”

They die without another word, the shotgun blast echoing all up and down the hallway.

“That was unhelpful,” James comments blithely as he ejects the spent round.

Keith stares at him, eyes wide. “You killed them.”

“You were planning on playing princesses and tea parties, maybe?” James replies as he kneels down to rifle through the corpses’ gear. “They weren’t gonna tell us shit and I have extremely limited patience for bullshit at the moment.”

High-end tactical gear meant for infiltration and invasion, sound dampeners and eezo-powered localized electro-magnetic shielding. Outstanding. Just what his wounded ass needed to be dealing with. He stands with a groan and staggers over to prod the other corpse with business end of the shotgun. Keith makes a noise that James doesn’t bother to decipher from the doorway.

More expensive, experimental gear from questionable manufacturers with inventive accounting practices.

“Outstanding,” he sighs as he hauls himself up to standing again. 

Keith catches him by the elbow when he sways and tries to herd him back to the bed. James snaps his teeth at him and Keith scoffs: “You can barely stand.”

“Sufficiently mobile for current needs,” James says he tries to shake Keith off.

“What does that even mean, you fucking lunatic.”

James tries to tug his arm free of Keith’s grip, but all he manages to do is unbalance both of them until they trip over the corpse on the floor. James grunts as Keith falls on him, heavy and warm, as they sprawl in an ungainly tangle of limbs. He shoves at Keith’s shoulder with a snarl. Keith snaps back at him, his fangs far more impressive than James’ blunt omnivore set.

“If you want me to sit here and wait for the next squad to come through and blow my brains out,” James snaps, “like a ptarmigan with its camouflage out of season, you have another thing fucking coming.”

Keith sputters for a moment before glaring down at him.

“Didn’t think of that, did you, hotshot?” James asks with a sneer that seems to make itself permanently at home on his face any time he’s talking to Kogane for longer than thirty seconds. “Did you just run from one engagement to another operating on pure instinct and unholy luck before you managed to fall down a cosmic hole and end up back at Earth?”

Keith narrows his eyes but remains suspiciously silent.

“You did,” James sighs. “Out-fucking-standing. Get off me, you feral fucking goblin, one of us has to plan and it sure as shit not gonna be you.”

“Why are you like this?” Keith asks, his tone suggesting the question is posed to the universe at large rather than James specifically.

“D’ya want that list chronologically or by order of significance?” James says while shoving ineffectually at Keith’s shoulder. “Get off me. I seriously doubt the rest of the clean-up squad will wait until we finish our touching tableau to kill our asses.”

There’s a long moment while Keith’s face goes through an entire complicated journey before settling on deeply frustrated. “You are,” he says slowly, “such an asshole.”

“I’m an asshole who’s also right. Get off.”

Keith rolls off him and stands up with a grace that James’ battered body flatly refuses to emulate. He pushes himself to sitting, biting back on a groan, and prods the slowly cooling body next to the bed with one foot. It has not escaped his attention that he’s naked as the day as he was born and unarmed besides. There’s no way the sleek chameleon armour will fit him—each set designed for the individual wearer’s bio-electric signature—but he thinks about it.

A wad of soft fabric hits him in the face. 

It takes him an embarrassingly long time to figure out what the fuck Keith’s lobbed at him. James stares at what appears to be a pair of comfortable work out pants, faded and worn and clearly old favorites. He looks up and gives Kogane a skeptical eyebrow.

“You aren’t wearing any pants,” Keith says. James thinks the tops of his ears have gone ever-so-slightly pink. 

“And whose fault is that, hotshot,” James retorts as he shimmies into the pants. They’re too short by a few inches and hang off his hips precariously. Kogane makes a choked sort of noise. James ignores him in favor of picking up one of the shotguns and checking the chambers. Limited ammo, but he thinks he’ll have plenty of opportunities to scavenge. “This’ll have to do.”

Kogane makes another one of those noises reminiscent of a duck being strangled.

James flips the shotgun around to rest the barrel against his shoulder, muzzle pointed to the ceiling, and makes a gesture towards the open door. “You’ll have to take point, hotshot,” he says as Kogane’s face does another one its journeys through a full range of complex expressions. “I’m not exactly at peak combat form.”

“You could just stay down and let us handle it, _Jamie_ ,” Keith snaps, but he picks his way through the blood and the bodies to flatten himself against the door and scan the hallway. 

“One, fuck no,” James says as he fits himself into the space at Keith’s back, careful not to crowd but tight enough to cover Keith’s six. Keith’s fingers spasm for a moment. “Two, who is ‘us.’ And three, my name is _James_ , thanks.”

“You are such an asshole,” Keith grumbles as he slides into the silent hallway. Atlas’ emergency lights paint the space in soft red light and odd shadows. 

“Guilty,” James whispers, delighting in the way Keith shivers as his breath ghosts along Keith’s neck. “Grab the Occam razors unless you intend to keep disemboweling people with your kitten-claws.”

Keith shoots him an inscrutable look before scooping up the razors and shoving them in his boots. He pulls a knife with an odd handle out from who the fuck knows where, closes his eyes like he’s meditating, and runs a hand down the blade. It ripples under his touch like disturbed water, edges bleeding outward following the sweep of Keith’s hand, until he’s holding a curving long sword. 

“Huh,” James says intelligently, impressed despite himself. “Neat party trick.”

Keith rolls his eyes. 

The hallway is still and quiet in ways that raise all the hair along the back of his neck. It’s unsettling, anxiety-producing, to follow along in Keith’s near-silent wake. James misses Ryan’s steady present at his back, the sound of Lance’s sarcastic commentary in his ear piece, Ina and Nadia pacing in front of him, lovely and lethal. He feels oddly stripped bare and vulnerable following Kogane as he stalks his way down Atlas’ silent paths.

They’re nearly to the little white room that holds Lance and his homicidally-inclined princess when they spot a trio of professional killers in their silvered tactical armour. James hisses a warning even as Keith is dropping down and out of the way from James’ shot radius. The blast of the shotgun nearly deafens him, and he can see the way Keith grimaces. But it takes one of the operative’s straight in the chest, sending them flying backwards in a spray of blood and shattered armor. 

The remaining pair swing towards them with surreal precision—the light of their scopes and optics reflecting strangely in Atlas’ light, eezo-powered perhaps—and Keith snarls something in a language James doesn’t recognize.

“Hotshot, don’t yo—”

James’ warning shout is drowned out in an unholy shriek of metal moving along metal, a high screeching that makes him shudder and nausea climb up his throat. The entire hallway twists like an M.C. Escher painting come to life. Walls sliding together, floor folding backwards, ceiling disappearing. The screams of assassins are short, garbled and wet. James looks down at Keith who stares back at him with equally huge eyes. Because _what_ the unholy _fuck_.

The hallway reorders itself with distressingly little fanfare.

Allura walks down the blood and viscera painted hall on slender bare feet, a sheet wrapped around her like a royal gown, her hair a riot of silver curls falling down to her hips. James is vaguely aware that Keith’s moved to place himself between Allura and James, as if he could do anything in the face of her incandescent rage. He thinks he appreciates the gesture though.

She moves like a wraith, like something unreal, and it makes his heart seize in his chest.

“Allura,” Keith starts, because he’s always had more courage than sense. “What did you jus—"

She places a single slim finger to his lips and Keith, amazingly, falls silent—lets her catch his chin in her hand and tilt his face this way and that as if he is hers to inspect. Though, if James has his history of the paladins and their relationship to Altea’s last princess, he supposes Keith is.

“You are unharmed,” Allura says, her voice like something out of a dream or a half-remembered song.

Keith just nods. Stares at her like he’s never seen her before. Allura tilts her head from one side to another as if thinking something over. She sighs, soft and faint, as she comes to some sort decision that she doesn’t bother to share. James is frankly shocked at how docile Keith is in her hands, as if too stunned by her explosive capacity for violence.

Which, to be fair, had been pretty damned impressive.

“Princess,” James says, tries to interject, but when Allura turns to study him all the words run from his mind like sands from the bottom of an hourglass.

Her eyes a deep, luminous blue—glowing in the faint light of the hallway, and the look in them is alarmingly feral.

“James,” she breathes and holds out her other hand. He finds himself stepping forward, letting her press that slim, cold little hand to his cheek. Holds still for her inspection. She ghosts a hand over the bruises Keith’s left along the column of his throat, over the teeth marks along his collarbones, down the tender flesh of his ribs, fingers tripping over ripped stitches with a gentle little tongue click. 

“Reckless,” Allura chides and James murmurs a response that he doesn’t remember even as the words leave his mouth. She quirks a half-smile at him and he holds his breath as she rubs her thumb right over the bruise Keith’d left over his heart. James tilts his face into her hand when it comes back up to cup his cheek.

He doesn’t chase that cool touch when she takes her hand away, but it’s a near thing. James decides to take that feeling and stick it in a box for introspection later (‘later’ being the far side of fucking never) and watches with mute fascination when Allura cups Keith’s face with both hands. Keith looks worryingly pale caught in her dark fingers. He watches her with eyes gone huge, gone faintly amber, starting to glow with inner light, even as they fill with nameless trepidation.

“Guard him,” she commands and Keith blinks at her. Allura tilts her head and smiles faintly. “He has some disturbingly suicidal tendencies and he’s an idiot besides.”

James makes a wordless noise of pure protest and they both slant him considering looks. They’re a matched set like this. Light to dark. Soft curves to hard lines. Her delicate ferocity a counterpoint to Keith’s blunt-force brutality. Their eyes glitter queerly in the low light. Allura’s dainty fangs very white against the deep red of her lips when she grins at him, unrepentant and entirely alien. 

He really should worry about his dick because it takes the entirely wrong message from the little scene.

“Where are you going?” Keith asks, soft and still for her in a way that James would have thought impossible for him before. The way Keith shivers in her hold makes James think that it’s maybe a surprise for Keith as well.

“There is a team of saboteurs headed to Atlas’ core,” Allura says as she rubs her thumbs along Keith’s cheekbones. James watches with mute fascination as Keith’s eyelashes flutter for a moment. “I am going to kill them.”

“Not that your last demonstration of homicidal violence wasn’t impressive and all,” James says as he files away the way Keith’s gone still and pliant under Allura’s gentle ministrations—touch-starved doesn’t even start to explain the half of it. “But you are just one person.”

Allura’s smile widens to a really alarming degree, shows off her fangs in all their wicked glory, and her eyes twinkle with a sort of delighted malevolence James sincerely hopes is never directed at him. 

“Perhaps,” Allura agrees sweetly. “But I am never truly alone. And besides, Coran is making his way to the castle crystal.”

Keith makes a skeptical sound in the back of his throat, mouth twisting into a frown of displeasure. “Coran.”

Allura laughs. There’s a joke there between the two of them that James doesn’t follow. She smiles at Keith, so deep her dimples show. “He was my father’s left hand,” she says, voice full of mischievous glee. “He has, how do you say, mysterious depths?”

“Hidden depths,” James corrects. Somewhere Nadia is laughing at him and she doesn’t even know why. 

Allura laughs again, soft and amused. When she drops her hands, finally letting go of Keith, he falls forward for a half second before catching himself. “Indeed,” she says to James. “Lance has gone to find Ryan and ‘hunt dumb PX rangers with more money than skill’ but I suspect you’ll find the pair of them—or their trail of bodies—if you head to the hangers.”

“Allura,” Keith says, catching her wrist loosely. She smiles at him, bemused and ever so slightly feral. Accepts the cage of his hands with ill-grace, but accepts it, nonetheless. “We could go with you.”

“Sweet,” Allura replies gently as she tugs her wrist free. “But unnecessary.”

“Princess,” James says, but the words die in his throat when she turns to consider him. She’s beautiful and horribly compelling with her bare and bloody feet, wrapped in nothing but a sheet. Keith gives him a look over her head—all big eyes and hopeless awkwardness. Sometimes James wonders how these supposed defenders of the universe ever functioned without dedicated intermediaries. “None of us have comms, going alone is unwise.”

Allura tilts her head to the side, hair spilling around her, and James thinks this is what the _gwraig annwn_ looked like from his nan’s stories. Beautiful, inhuman, and all to willing to drown your sorry ass if you upset them. Her smile is small and mischievous, both terribly in and out of place for the circumstances. He thinks of slim, dark hands reaching up from silvered water.

“But I have Atlas to tell me where everyone is,” Allura says simply.

“Outstanding, grand for you, but _we_ do not.”

Her dimples are unfairly charming. “Are you worried for me Lieutenant?”

James gives her a little one-shouldered shrug. “I think too much,” he tells her in that same frank tone. He’s vaguely aware of Keith watching them with a thoughtful expression that promises to be trouble later. “And that means I worry.”

She makes a skeptical sound, eyes narrowed, as she watches him. Not sold yet, but willing to be convinced.

“Princess,” he continues—James can feel himself draw up into parade rest, as if giving a field report to brass, which he supposes he is. “If Lance and Ryan are on intercept to the hangers they are likely to rendezvous with Nadia and Veronica. Thus, forming a full squad compliment of two snipers with front line support and tactical reconnaissance. Diverting to their position would be a waste of resources best used as a force projection compliment to your current mission.”

Allura gives him an impossibly dry look while Keith looks like he’s chewing on the inside of his mouth to keep from saying anything.

James snaps his gaze to somewhere two feet over Allura’s left shoulder before continuing.

“Furthermore,” he says into that silence full of undercurrents he doesn’t quite follow, “if my understanding of the current tactical situation is correct, then the Voltron engineers are likely either at comms site or making their way in that direction. Based on past operational conduct, I am going assume that Leifsdotter has joined their sortie. So, in terms of strategic deployment of current combat assets, the best use of myself and PLN Kogane would be to support the securing of the Atlas energy core.”

Allura makes a noise that’s caught between a laugh and sigh. “Is this what I get to look forward to as your commanding officer?”

“Only when you’re disagreeing with me.”

“Hm.”

Keith wheezes out a rough bark of laughter and then looks startled with himself. James watches him with an expression he’s pretty sure matches Allura’s own bemused confusion. Keith waves a finger between the two of them. “It’s nice to watch your bullshit happen to someone else for once,” he tells James. “It really is.” 

Allura turns that dry look on Keith and then rolls her eyes. He shares a look with Keith when she turns on one delicate heel and continues down the hallway. She gets a couple feet ahead of them before turning back to them with raised eyebrows. “Well?” Allura asks. “Aren’t you supposed to be my escort?”

They scramble to follow her.

* * *

Direct Message:

Slav (reality 21412): I have done the math and this is most certainly the reality within which Udina (distasteful, rude little man) sends assassins to attempt to hijack the Atlas. 

Slav (reality 21412): I will send you detailed assessments of their likely courses of action, including the realities in which they attempt an unrecoverable core failure by introducing an unstable ME fusion matrix into the quintessence field of the castle-crystal, which will induce a reality-cascading opening of sequential rifts.

Slav (reality 21412): this is a thing we cannot allow

Slav (reality 21412): if you read theories 2523152316 and 25235 you will see the key factors to watch for to determine if we have entered into that reality branch. Please report if you have noted any of those occurrences.

Slav (reality 21412): Holt 3

Slav (reality 21412): Holt 3 this is not the time to be difficult

Slav (reality 21412): Holt 3 response is required

Slav (reality 21412): Holt 3

Slav (reality 21412): Matthew Alexander Holt

Slav (reality 21412): _Matthew_

Slav (reality 21412): Matt? 

Slav (reality 21412): Ah. This is the reality in which you go into a full-scale emotional shut down and reject all forms communication save familial and your palemate. I will contact your palemate.

* * *

Slav (reality 21412): Your palemate is in distress. Attend to him.

Correct Black Paladin: My what 

Slav (reality 21412): your palemate. Moirail. Diamond quadrant. Conciliatory platonic partner. Whatever word you care to use in your primitive and imagineless language.

Correct Black Paladin: busy rn

Slav (reality 21412): this takes precedence over all else, Black Paladin, you must deflect this.

Correct Black Paladin: Slav. There are people shooting at us and I don’t have time for this

Slav (reality 21412): Yes. I am aware that there is a very high likelihood of violence at your immediate location, fortunately you are both adept at dealing violence and multitasking. 

Correct Black Paladin: Shooting. At. Us.

Slav (reality 21412): Focus your mind, Shirogane. I will not lose Holt 3 due to your malfeasance. 

Correct Black Paladin: Matt just beheaded someone with their own blade and is now doing a really terrifying impression of Nick Curran, so I think he’s pretty much got himself covered.

Slav (reality 21412): He is emotionally compromised and inclined to make rash decisions. In 43.252% of all realities this leads to his untimely death due to a dramatic but unnecessary confrontation with the team lead of the execution squad sent by Blue Suns Corporation. Focus, Shirogane.

Correct Black Paladin: 43.252%. That’s. Very specific.

Slav (reality 21412): In 23.42% of realities possible he sustains lasting injuries. 

Slav (reality 21412): You will focus and ensure that _this_ is in the 33.328% of possible realities where he suffers only emotional distress and some light injuries.

Correct Black Paladin: reality pathways: list?

Slav (reality 21412): Oh good. We are already in a better pathway. Describe your situation and I will give you the mathematically optimal resolution to minimize harm to Holt 3.

Correct Black Paladin: Minimize harm to everyone.

Slav (reality 21412): Holt is the one most compromised. Minimize damage to him, you minimize damage to the rest.

* * *

There is a steady stream of whispered bickering behind her that Allura finds more comforting than she really ought. It is a mundane and inelegant song that anchors her back to herself as Atlas happily fractures her perception across myriad segments of the ship. Each one with their own actors and little dramas as if she were a in decisive theatergoer flipping between entertainments. Atlas filters Allura’s impressions with Shiro’s, with the security feeds, with fragmented conversation from her fellow paladins.

Sometimes she has to pause to breathe. Press a hand to a wall to center herself within her own body. Remind herself that she’s not a six-foot-two human with an alien prosthetic. That she’s not a great ship adrift among a sea of stars.

That she’s not a pride of lions waiting restless and impatient for their pilots.

Listening to James snipe at Keith, all erudite words and sneering disdain, and Keith snap back with brusque irritation helps to remind her where she is— _who_ she is.

Atlas hums in the back of her mind, interested and curious, but not entirely certain why _these_ sentient beings are different from _those_ sentient beings. It takes both Allura and Shiro to convince her to not just open the main airlocks and vent all trespassers into space. Atlas doesn’t see why this isn’t the correct course of action, but she takes their insistence to heart and contents herself to providing alarmingly panoptic visions of their enemies.

Allura really does wish Atlas would stop referring to her as ‘mommy,’ though. 

“You can barely stand, asshole,” Keith snaps, loud enough to draw Allura out of her reverie.

She turns to find James bracing himself against a wall, shotgun held loosely in one hand, breathing shallowly. He glares at Keith from under his messy bangs. “I am perfectly combat functional,” he retorts as he drags himself upright. The move looks like it pains him and Keith’s mouth twists further into a disapproving frown. “Your sudden impression of a setting hen is unnecessary.”

Keith sputters wordlessly.

“Setting hen?” Allura asks. She smiles sweetly when they both startle at the sound of her voice. 

“Type of small, angry bird,” James answers while Keith rolls his eyes expressively. “They brood. And cuss out anyone who gets near whatever it is they’ve decided is theirs to protect.”

Allura eyes Keith who glowers back at her, the tips of his ears going brilliantly red. “I see.”

There’s a long moment where she considers both of them—Keith glaring at the ground while James stares back at her, cool and defiant—until she continues down the hallway once again. Atlas helpfully providing her with visions of Lance moving silent and deadly through the maintenance ducts of the hangers with Ryan at his back. The dislocation is so intense she almost misses the hissed conversation behind her.

“Are you just going to humiliate me every chance you get?”

“You do that all on your own, hotshot. Besides, I thought the big, bad Black Paladin didn’t give a fuck what anyone else thought.”

“I care, asshole. Okay? I care.”

“You have such fascinating ways of demonstrating it. Tell me, were you by chance raised by wolves?”

“Now I know you trying to piss me off.”

“And behold my success.”

“How does anyone ever work with you, you miserable asshole.”

“You are cordially inv—”

“ _Boys_ ,” Allura interrupts without turning around. There’s a distinctly satisfying silence behind her. “You do remember that we are hunting well-armed assassins with a skeleton crew and some of us are rather, erm, underdressed.”

She has never been so aware that she’s wrapped in nothing but a sheet as the silence turns contemplative.

“Yes,” James says, drawing out the word like he’s trying to find a diplomatic way of phrasing his next words. “But you crushed them with a wall. Makes us a little redundant?”

Allura pauses again to consider James. He gives her sweet smile. Keith looks between the two of them for a moment and then gives her a little shrug before nodding his agreement. 

“And yet you insisted that I required an escort,” Allura says slowly.

“Oh no,” James replies brightly, “I just pointed out that best use of combat resources was us coming with you since I can barely stand, Kogane is a barely controlled ball of angst for frankly no reason I can decipher, and you crushed three people with a wall.”

Allura has to bite the inside of her mouth as Keith gets an expression like he’s seriously contemplating throttling James, who, for his part, looks like he’s about to fall over but manages to nevertheless be intensely smug. “You are an impossible man,” she tells him. “Utterly impossible.”

“So I have been told,” James agrees easily as Keith looks increasingly like he’s decided that homicide is an acceptable method for dealing with James and is only deliberating the method. “In my defense my neural architecture is jacked to fuck and that seems to mess with my filter.”

“Is he always like this?” She asks Keith. This time James rolls his eyes dramatically.

“ _Yes_.”

“Hm.”

She’s about to continue along her slow and careful path to Atlas’ core—towards the glowing bit of crystal that had been her last home—when Atlas floods her mind with the image of Lance stretched out long with the promise of quiet death carried in his slender fingers. Ryan murmurs information in his ear as Lance fits his rifle to his shoulder in smooth movements that suggest long familiarity. She watches through Atlas’ eyes as Lance breathes in, breathes out, and fires. The line of his shoulders soften as his shot finds its mark. The vision drops and she finds herself blinking at Keith and James.

Keith’s expression’s gone the sort of blank of poor poker players and bad liars, his fingers gone bone white where they clutch James’ arm. He’ll have bruises there—Allura can already see them forming—but James breathes not a word of complaint. James watches her with one eyebrow up, a sardonic smile twisting his lips, and he cocks his head to the side. “Back with us, Princess?” He asks gently. “You zoned out for a moment.”

“Atlas was showing me Lance and Ryan.”

James makes a pleased little sound—smug and delighted and fond all at once—and grins. “Pretty, aren’t they? Death times two.”

“I really don’t think you should be as pleased as you sound over their capacity for destruction,” Allura observes tartly.

“Enh.” James shrugs, all lazy grace Allura is pretty sure is a bluff to hide how every part of him aches, and his smug grin widens alarmingly, goes charmingly crooked. “I lead an elite combat team. I’m pretty sure fostering my team’s lethality is well within my job description.”

“Lead,” Keith says. Allura can hear the air quotes around his words in his tone like a claxon to blare Keith’s derision and scorn. 

James sneers at him. “Better than you, hotshot. Though that is taking the bar and burying at the molt core of the earth and then being excited when I can walk over it.”

Something in Keith’s eyes flares for a moment, hot and furious, before he glances at Allura and deflates like a scolded child. It’s an action/reaction so close in time that she can’t help but notice. Keith mutters something under his breath as he shoulders past James, posture so ridged that his spine could be used as spare turbine rods for Atlas.

Allura raises her eyebrows at James, who shrugs expressively but his gaze stays sharp, contemplative, faintly puzzled but determined to pry the missing parts out of Keith and align them until they make sense. She’s almost entirely certain Keith would tolerate that with spectacular ill-grace.

Keith stalks the hallway without looking at either of them. He’s a boy made of sharp edges, hunger, and a graceless awkwardness that dogs his every interaction. His loneliness is a sunburn and he doesn’t want to be touched.

“I don’t think he intends to wait for us,” James says, his voice taking the cadence like he’s quoting, “thus we’d better stop for him.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Keith complains. His face is a child’s caricature of confusion—scrunched nose, furrowed brows, pursed lips—and if there’s a sheen to his eyes, a high color riding his cheeks, they both do him the grace of not mentioning it.

“It’s not my fault your education has been distressing lacking in late 1800s Romantic poets,” James replies in that flippant tone that has Keith’s lips pulling back to show off his canines. James continues down hallway with blithe disregard for Keith’s obvious displeasure. He pulls Allura along with him, one hand at her elbow, trembling against her skin, a fine shiver along his fingers.

Allura frowns at him.

“Are you hiding your injuries again?” She asks, refusing to be towed. James huffs out annoyed breath before giving her a side-long look.

“Yes,” Keith answers before James can launch on whatever rambling tirade he’s got at the ready to deflect attention. “He is. Yes.”

“Stubborn, impossible man,” Allura chides and James makes a face at her.

“I am perfectly combat function, especially now that I’ve found this lovely shotgun with a really stu— _oh_ ”

James goes still under her hands and Keith sighs out a breath that sounds more relieved that Allura thinks he might like to let on. Silence fills the little maintenance hallway like water spilling into a cracked foundation. Allura closes her eyes rather than stare into James’, so dark and bruised with exhaustion, and concentrate on coaxing her sputtering reserves of magic. The glow of her hands bleeds through her closed eyelids, turning her inner world a lurid red.

There’s lingering damage to his neurological architecture that worries her—all the root level stuff is just fine: breathe, eat, walk, snark at Keith—but some of the higher-level functions are frazzled, sparking haphazardly, throwing random pain signals up and down James’ spine. She spreads her fingers over his chest and feels his breathing hitch, hears Keith draw closer, frowns in concentration.

“Hush,” she murmurs. She’s not sure to which one she speaks: the way James has gone shuddery and pliant under her hands like a small prey animal before a predator, how Keith creeps into her blind spots like he could take her, or Atlas singing away in the back of her mind. “Be still.”

James shivers and breathes fitfully trapped in the loose cage of her hands. The damage to his system is more extensive than she’d realized, and she clicks her tongue in annoyance. 

“Allura?” Keith asks softly, careful as if he were trying to talk to wounded predator in a trap.

She has a moment of dislocation as Atlas attempts to show her Shiro and Matt, fighting back to back, Matt’s face curiously devoid of emotion. “Hush,” she says aloud. “This is complicated.”

Atlas retreats with a sense of lingering concern, but healing the burned and damaged neural connections riddling James’ neural architecture takes all her attention and Allura can’t chase the feeling. One wrong push, one stray thought, one careless application of redirected quintessence could cripple James, and that is a risk she has to minimize. Allura shuts out Atlas, Keith’s hovering presence, the distracting warmth of James’ bare skin under fingers and focuses on her sputtering reserves of magic. They are embers, sparking fitfully, and she is so cold. 

Exhaustion floods her as she coaxes her magic through James’ delicate neuropathways. An ache settles in her bones that steals her breath and makes concentration a monumental challenge.

But the uneven, pain-worn hitch to James’ breathing evens out. He stands straighter under her touch. Skin knits around ripped stitches. She eases the worst of the lurid purple and blue bruises painting his ribs until his skin is mottled with ugly yellow-green bruise. 

(Though she leaves the little constellations of bruises across his collarbones, up the column of his neck, alone for the way they make Keith’s hands twitch, just a little, every time he spots them. No one ever said she wasn’t just a little mean.)

James is still pale, worn, and looks like he’s been hit by a truck that decided to reverse. But he stands firmly planted on his feet, breathing steady and unpained. Still unhealthy, but better. Still terribly fragile, but no longer slowly shattering like dropped crystal.

One last push, Allura thinks, one last push and she can heal him completely. 

She is _so_ cold.

James catches her hands and pulls them from his chest, his face, and holds them trapped when she tugs on them in irritation. “Enough,” James says so softly its almost a whisper. “Allura, that’s enough.”

“You’re almost healed,” she says—tries to say, but her voice cracks on the edges of the words, rendering them awkward and difficult to understand. She tries to swallow and finds the attempt ragged, dry, and painful.

“Should we carry her?” Keith asks as if Allura weren’t standing right there. She growls at him, or tries to, and then glares when the sound that rattles out of her is closer to a distressed whine than a satisfying warning rumble.

Keith glances at her, worry almost tangible in his gaze, before looking back to James with both his eyebrows arched expectantly.

“I think she’d smother us both in our sleep if we tried that,” James answers. He’s got her hands caught tight and grins at her, smug and unrepentant, when she can’t yank them free. “Wouldn’t you?”

“I might smother you now.”

“And undo all your hard work? Nah.”

Keith sputters out a tiny, disbelieving laugh. “How, exactly, are we going to deal with this mess now?” He asks. He seems more amused than concerned. When Allura shoots him a slitty-eyed look, Keith waves a hand at the pair of them, expression flatly judgmental. “James still looks like he’s on the wrong side of death’s door, and now you look like you’ve gone and sidled up right beside him.”

“Mean,” James says with a pleased little grin though Allura has no idea why. “Besides, I still have this great shotgun and a whole lot of unresolved anger issues.”

Keith blinks. “Anger issues? Really?”

“Well, no, but the line was good.”

“I can still hit them with a wall,” Allura reminds them, feeling ignored and petulant about it. “That is still a thing I can do. It doesn’t take magic to do that. I just ask Atlas.”

“Outstanding,” James drawls. “ _You_ have anger issues and a homicidally-inclined pet warship. That is in no way worrying, I’m sure.”

Allura finally gets her hands free and rearranges her sheet with all the dignity she can summon. “I don’t have anger issues.”

“Princess, you crushed your enemies _with a wall_. A _wall_.”

“You know,” Keith says thoughtfully, “I never thought there would come a day when I had the least number of issues in a group, but here we are.”

“I don’t have issues.”

“Jamie,” Allura says even as she makes a face at Keith. He gives her a very bland face in return. It is perhaps the closest to banter that they have ever come. “You have the most spectacular set of authority issues of anyone I have ever met, and I know Keith.”

She feels enormously smug when they both sputter at her in mute indignation.

* * *

Slav (reality 21412): nononononono

Slav (reality 21412): No. 

Slav (reality 21412): Do not allow Matthew to go to the hangers. 

Correct Black Paladin: Hangers bad. Why?

Slav (reality 21412): In 56.526% of realities where Holt 3 goes to the hangers to confront those holding his maternal unit hostage, he allows rage to cloud both his reason and his reactions. He dies in a needless though dramatically appropriate confrontation. 

Correct Black Paladin: he disagrees

Slav (reality 21412): he is wrong

Slav (reality 21412): tell him

Slav (reality 21412): tell him he is wrong. Now. Tell him now.

Slav (reality 21412): in those realities where he does not die, he is irrevocably damaged and the princess dies trying to heal him.

Slav (reality 21412): then the entire multiverse collapses because … too long to explain

Slav (reality 21412): do not allow him to go to the hangers

Slav (reality 21412): do not allow the princess to heal anyone else

Slav (reality 21412): not during this confrontation

Slav (reality 21412): in 87.12% of all realities, by the time you meet the princess she has already overextended to her abilities to a dangerous degree. 

Slav (reality 21412): in 99.252% of all realities in an ‘overtaxed’ timeline when Allura attempts to heal, she dies. Do not permit this to happen. 

Correct Black Paladin: where

Slav (reality 21412): Your choices are as follows:

Sla (reality 21412): to Holt 4—this is optimal as it minimizes risks to Holt 3 and greatly accelerates the timeline for the development of a secured, quantum entangled communications network capable of sustaining the information transference needs of the entire rebellion; 

Slav (reality 21412): to the incorrect black paladin at the core of the Atlas—this is not an ideal pathway forward as it introduces greater emotional variables and instability to the situation, but it does minimize risks to both the princess and incorrect black paladin; 

Slav (reality 21412): or to the infirmaries of the Atlas to help stabilize the Atlas life support systems of the ship after the inevitable attack on core functionalities.

Slav (reality 56292): or he could return to the bridge to ensure the integrity of the main weapons array of the Atlas

Slav (reality 97932): In only .002234% of realities does the infiltration team sent attempt to attack the Garrison by violently commandeering the Atlas’ heavy artillery battery.

Slav (reality 97932): This is not a reality pathway with which we need to concern ourselves.

Slav (reality 324): all reality pathways are pathways with which we ought to concern ourselves

Slav (reality 311251): You only say this because you’re in the reality pathway where we go insane and attempt to end all realities by collapsing them into a single space-time continuum.

Slav (reality 324): i have an objection

Slav (reality 76485): 324, you are not the most stable, and I mean this as merely an observation of your status as a string landscape of false vacua and not as a value judgement.

Slav reality (324): value judgement: fu

Slav (reality 451): what is your objection 324

Slav (reality 324): Objection: come and say that to my face and see what happens

Slav (reality 311251): now there is a compelling argument.

[ _multiple people are typing_ ]

Slav (reality 21412): This is not a discussion memo. All non-contiguous reality representatives are summarily banned from this chat.

Correct Black Paladin: Okay. What the fuck just happened?

* * *

The hallway is long, narrow, and full of fitful shadows. Keith is almost certain he’s had screaming nightmares featuring hallways like this. Hallways painted in institutional grey. Hallways in black and glowing purple. Long strips made of alien metal and cracked marble leading places he doesn’t know. Signs in crisply lettered English. Flickering holograms in a language he shouldn’t recognize but knows in his bones. Keith’s pretty certain he’s woken himself up screaming because of hallways like this.

But he walks down it anyway. Tells himself that he knows where this hallway ends. That nothing that lives within these halls is a threat to him and his. Keith tells himself that the Atlas is Shiro’s and nothing of Shiro’s would ever hurt him.

He suppresses a shudder at the sudden memory of Atlas rearranging itself like child’s dollhouse, crushing bodies and smearing the walls with blood. A new memory to add to the pile that his subconscious hoards like a miser counting coins. Keith tries to forget, suppress, drown memory of Allura walking down that streaked hall like a queen, like the last witch intent on revenge for her murdered kind, but the haunted look in her eyes haunts him.

But then Allura had cupped his face between her palms like he’s something precious, like he’s something of hers, and looked him over for injury. Run her thumbs over his cheeks like he needed soothing. Smiled sweetly for him and held him between her hands like he’s something she even _wanted_ to keep and he’s not sure how to approach that thought.

He’d felt her magic seep into his skin, bit by bit, to ease aches and pain with parts of her own life force. Keith’s not sure when he became something of hers to protect, to nourish with parts of her own soul, but the thought feeds a part of him that’s never really learned not to be greedy. Not to grab with both hands any hand that insists on reaching for him no matter how he might try to smack it away at first.

Never did learn not to cling even when something isn’t his to have.

Keith keeps pace ahead of them because he doesn’t know what kind of face he’ll make if he looks at them. He’s got the memory of James gone slack with orgasm and sleep etched into his mind. He’s got the ghost of Allura’s cold hands tenderly holding his face as if he were something precious. He doesn’t know what to do with those memories, but he’s got them now. 

And he’s painfully aware that James and Allura are the last of their kind. James the last of a military line reaching back to the first of the world wars. Keith can’t imagine knowing a family history spanning centuries. But sometimes when James doesn’t think anyone’s looking Keith can see the weight of it, the ghosts of it, hanging off his shoulders like a funeral shroud. A list of names and dates that all end on the same day etched into James’ ribs in black ink—rising from his pale skin in thin lines that you only know are there if you run your fingers over them. And Keith has that memory burned into the tips of his fingers too. 

And Allura. 

Keith can’t even wrap his head around how she stands as the punctuation mark to all that Altea was. The last, defiant witch of royal blood.

He knows he’s got two scions, the last of their lines, behind him and something inside his head goes strange and feral and seething with defiant rage that the universe would try once again to wipe them away. James catches Allura’s arm when she sways, face ashen and drawn from healing and healing and healing again—each time drawing a little more of the fire out of her bones until she’s left hollowed out and brittle. James holds her up even though he’s gone paler than snow and nearly as cold, the marks Keith’d left on him standing out in stark contrast. 

James says something too soft for Keith to catch and Allura laughs, harsh and rasping, as if her throat refuses to function properly. 

Keith wants to scream, to howl into the void, into that the ravenous, indifferent universe can’t have them. It might have taken everything else, left the pair of them as infinitely fragile remainders, but it can’t have _them_.

The tips of his fingers, his gums, itch with need to sink into tender, delicate flesh and pull it apart. It’s not an entirely human impulse, he thinks: this need to plant himself in front of them like a wall made of flesh and bone and lethal intent. Keith’s not certain where the need comes from, but it curls in his gut like an illness. It’s so close to the feeling Shiro always prompts within him but stripped of the helpless tenderness that uncurls in his chest anytime he thinks about Shiro for longer than a few minutes.

Whatever it is that works its way through his system like a sickness at the thought of James, all black and burning ferocity; whatever feeling Allura prompts inside him when she catches him in her freezing hands for inspection; neither fill his chest with light and vapor. Trying to find a category, an analogy for it—trying to make any sort of sense of it, makes his head throb.

Keith wishes they’d trip over more of Udina’s thugs, something that he could take out this feeling on without remorse. 

Something that screams.

Allura laughs again, and Keith feels his eye twitch. Despite facing what is—in his perhaps unsophisticated analysis, he doesn’t cite _Maria von Clausewitz_ to make his points (whoever that is)—a grim and dangerous situation, James and Allura trade soft insults and sly innuendo as they make their slow way to the Atlas’ core. He wants to hurry them along. He wants to herd them into a place he can secure. The space between Keith’s shoulders crawls with the feeling of being exposed, vulnerable, and the painful awareness of the three of them he’s the only one that can move without pain.

Keith hates literally everything about everything and his fingertips itch with need to feel blood.

The banter that slides between the pair of endlings is hushed and indistinct. A susurration of whispers that he can’t make out even if he strains.

“I did notice you left all the, um. Hm.”

“Love bites?” Allura finishes brightly.

Okay. That Keith heard and definitely wishes he hadn’t. He can’t stop the way his shoulders hunch up like a turtle retreating into its shell.

“Delicately put,” James says dryly. “Thank you for that.”

“Well. They are only cosmetic and I only have so much energy, you see.”

“I’m sure.”

“Besides, Keith put so much work into them, and they are so lovingly arranged, that I thought it rude to remove them.”

Keith can’t help the small, pained noise that tries climb out of his mouth. 

“Did you.” James’ voice is a desert, a desiccated corpse, a bone left to the wind. 

Allura hums tunelessly—happy and amused. “They look lovely against your skin. I especially like this one. right. here.”

Keith spins on one heel to glare at them when James makes a noise that will echo in Keith’s dreams. Allura smiles at him, small and mischievous, where she stands with the very tips of her fingers pressing into the mark that Keith’d sucked into the pale skin over James’ heart. She looks so young and so beautiful that Keith is pretty sure people could die of it. A flush paints the tops of James’ cheeks as he pulls her hand away.

“You are,” James tells Allura with something like fond exasperation coloring his tone, “an evil woman.”

“Well,” she responds tartly. “I never claimed to be nice. And besides, tell me Keith isn’t adorable when he’s flustered.”

Keith sputters when they both eye him considering.

“Princess, you need to behave,” James says even though laughter rides his tone. Keith snarls at him and gets an eyeroll in return.

“You think he’s cute when he’s all flustered and confused,” Allura says, grin sharp and vicious. Keith isn’t sure he hates them, but the feeling comes painfully close.

“And you have no filter when you are exhausted.”

“I’m not exhausted.”

“Princess, if I let go of you, you’d faceplant right into the floor like a drunk after last call.”

Keith takes a sharp sort of satisfaction in the way that Allura splutters with offense. She glares at them both before tugging herself free from James. She gets about three steps away from him before Keith can see her knees start to buckle. He catches her before she hits the ground and Allura sighs in frustration, making her bangs flutter. 

“If you keep being mean to me,” he tells her seriously, shocked with his own audacity, “I’m going to drop you.”

James opens up his mouth to say something witty and cutting and designed to get right under Keith’s skin and burn there like an infection when the sound of Atlas rearranging its interior stops all of them. They stand in mute confusion, barely breathing, as Atlas' walls ripple and slide like a pit of snakes or still living intestines bared to the air.

Keith almost drops Allura anyway when what had been a solid wall bleeds away to reveal Matt—face blank, hands bloody, and eyes alight with unholy rage—and Shiro.

Shiro looks at Keith, holding Allura cradled high against his chest and wrapped in nothing but a sheet, to James where he stands shirtless, barefoot, with a shotgun in a loose one-handed grip and his hair a mess. Keith can see the way something dark and possessive crawls through Shiro’s gray eyes before he locks it away in the deep places where all the things Shiro doesn’t want anyone to see live. 

Allura squirms in Keith’s arms when he unconsciously tightens his grip until he’s probably leaving bruises, but she doesn’t complain. Keith stares back at Shiro, heart going a million miles an hour, and something sour exploding over his tongue. 

He stares at Shiro and tries to keep his face blank. _How dare you_ , he thinks even as he tries to not let it show, tries not to even think it, even as he tries to keep the hurt buried down deep, _how dare you be jealous now_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. S8 was a whole ass thing that pissed me off and put me off writing for a little bit. And then life got ... real fucking weird. Good. But weird.


	14. Fire for Effect

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I have spent way too much time thinking about Slav and all his alternate reality selves. Probably way more time than the neurotic, angry little weasel deserves.

Lance is acutely aware of Ryan’s body pressed alongside his as they watch the pair of operatives on the far side of the hallway crumple to the floor. It’s not often that he feels short and slight and petite next to someone, but crammed into a tiny duct, peering through narrow slats of the ventilation grate, Lance feels slender and delicate against his partner’s bulk. He’s so _conscious_ of Ryan that he feels a little crazy with it. He wants to be annoyed with Allura for highlighting in neon all the ways his feelings about, for, on Ryan have tangled together in a confused mass. But, well, he did start the teasing. He’s not even a little surprised that his girl (and there’s a thought that makes him giddy like he’s swallowed a whole box of pop-rocks) would finish it. 

Ryan breathes out in time with Lance, slow and controlled, before quietly popping the grate out from their little hidey-hole. And Lance snaps back to present with enough force that he thinks his body should rock with it. The grate is easy to tuck away, just a whispering rasp of metal sliding along metal, and Lance thinks that it shouldn’t be so easy to maneuver.

Lance isn’t real sure why a sentient spaceship needs old school ventilation systems in the first place, but he’s not gonna complain about handy sniper nests tucked into convenient corners.

Ryan gestures for him to take point with one hand and a little eyebrow arch. It’s an unfair and distracting expression and Lance kinda wants to be resentful, but mostly he’s got Allura’s voice revealing his ridiculous crush playing on repeat through his head. Which, not the time, emotions, not the time. Shoving the memory of Allura’s teasing (distracting for a whole host of terrible, wonderful reasons) into a box, Lance squirms past him and tries not to fixate on the heavy weight of Ryan’s body, all dense muscle and lethal grace pressed up against him. 

It’s unfair the way the universe wants to test him. It really is.

It takes Lance a second to remember how to shift his bayard to its blunt-nosed rifle form. It’s been a bit since he’s run around ground-side in paladin gear and there’s a trick to getting a bayard to shift its form that he’s maybe forgotten. Eventually it shifts down and he kinda wonders if it even matters because it’s still gonna shoot thermal-radiation blasts rather than actual ammunition so the difference if form is pretty much just aesthetic. But Ryan inhales sharply with surprise, which is satisfying for the ego, and Lance has to bite back a grin. No reason to feel smug just because Altean weaponry prioritizes aesthetic over function. None at all. 

But god it’s a nice stroke to the ego to have Ryan going all wide-eyed and wondering over a thing Lance can pretend is no big deal. 

Grabbing the edge of the ventilation duct with one hand Lance drops to the floor soundlessly, rifle at the ready. The hallway is empty except for the pair of operatives in their expensive gear. Not that it did them any kind of good against a pair of snipers playing hide-and-go-seek in the air vents. Lance is maybe a little more smug about that than he oughta be, but whatever. No one’s gonna hold it against him.

When Lance makes the little gesture for all clear Ryan follows him, more graceful than a man in a tattered hospital smock has any right to be.

“That’s a neat party trick,” Ryan says, gesturing to Lance’s bayard, with the sort bland mildness that he only ever gets when referring to anything related to the Lions, ‘team Voltron,’ or Lance’s ‘other family’ as Ina so charmingly likes to call them. Sometimes Lance wonders if he’s become an accidental bigamist; but instead of maintaining two secret families, he’s got two separate (and mildly hostile) combat units to juggle. 

“Yeah,” he agrees easily—suddenly forcibly reminded of his very first, stilted and awkward, conversation with Ryan, but he knows Ryan’s tells now—“have to hand it to ancient Altean alchemy, they did build useful weapons.”

Lance lets his bayard fizzle back down into its weird little hand weapon form thing and holds it out for Ryan’s inspection.

Ryan gives it a distrustful look and declines taking it. “It’s cute.”

“Aw,” Lance laughs, “you talk like that and you’re gonna hurt my feelings. Make me feel insecure even. I’ll have to start overcompensating.”

He waggles his eyebrows at Ryan in what he thinks is an insinuating way, but probably just looks like his face is trying to have a localized stroke. That gets him an amused snort as Ryan neatly hip checks him into the wall. 

“But for real,” Lance continues as Ryan picks through an operative’s gear, tossing bits away with a little disdainful curl of his lip. It probably shouldn’t warm something in his chest like he’d swallowed down a full cup of cafecito to watch Ryan be a weapon snob as if they had any sort of time to be discerning, but it does. Makes him feel all warm and safe and affectionate. All disgusting and gooey emotions that he frankly loves to revel in. All because Ryan’s busy making fussy faces at expensive, eezo-powered shotguns. Lance resigns himself to being deeply fucked up and rolls with it. “It’s handy to have a weapon that comes when called. Makes it a little hard to get disarmed.”

“Didn’t you once get yourself chained to a tree one time and your ride jacked?”

Lance grimaces. 

“I don’t know why Pidge loves that story so much,” he whines. “But she’s bound and determined to tell the entirety of the universe individually.” Lance is pretty sure the only reason Pidge continues to talk to him is to collect humiliating stories about him to tell random strangers. Honestly, Lance sometimes wonders if she has actual friends, or just a collection of very long, very complex social experiments she carefully cultivates like a kid with an ant farm.

Ryan picks up an M40A6 and waggles it at him rather than responding.

“Nah,” Lance says and twirls his bayard. “I’ll stick with my bayard for right now. It doesn’t run out of ammo and the M40A6 has a bitch of a recoil so, like, hard pass.”

That gets his bayard another of those little disdainful, distrusting looks. Ryan hefts the rifle to check its sights, mutters something incomprehensible, but seems to find it acceptable. Ryan settles it so the barrel points to the ceiling as he prods the operative with one foot, expression thoughtful. “Pity chameleon armour is coded to the wearer’s biometrics,” Ryan says rather than any of the judgmental things that Lance can see in his expression. “They’ve got good gear.”

“Don’t let James hear you say that,” Lance says as he watches Ryan mournfully leave the operative and their biometric-locked gear lying in a bloody pool. Lance gets a really nice view of Ryan’s toned ass and a wide swath of his muscled back as the medical robe gapes and flutters around him—not at all built for combat, not that Lance is complaining. He doesn’t know what good deeds he did in a past life to get himself surrounded by so many pretty, pretty people but he’s not gonna complain. 

Ryan snorts. “I’d say his rants about unaccountable mercenary organizations undermining the politico-legal fabric of society are funny, but—” Ryan makes an expressive gesture towards the two operatives slumped against the wall at the bottom of a long, bloody streak.

Lance sighs. “Yeah. Less funny when he ends up being right.”

They share a commiserating look. One of the problems when it comes to dealing with Jamie: he’s too clever by half and a little smug with it, but fuck if he couldn’t do political analysis with the best of them. Pidge and Hunk were certifiable geniuses and arrogant as all fuck because of it, but politics and the sly sort of underhanded dealings that seemed to make up way more of Lance’s day-to-day than he’d really like were not their wheelhouse.

James, though, James seemed to live and breathe it and it made him vicious.

Which, Lance supposes, is a good thing. They need someone to be a sneaky, underhanded asshole since the rest of them were either too noble (Shiro), too naïve (Keith), too socially maladjusted (Pidge), or too simple (himself) to really go wading through all the subtle bullshit that forms a solid sixty percent of all Earth politics. Lance has to hand it to the Galra: light a fire, call a dude an emperor, stomp the shit out of the rest of the universe. Simple. Concise. Refreshingly to the point. As political systems went, it seemed to work out for them pretty well until some assholes came by with magical sentient cat-robots.

The entire line of thought makes him laugh a little bit. It’s a good thing, Lance reflects, that he isn’t the one doing the complex political analysis. 

Ryan arches an eyebrow at him. 

“Thinking about political systems,” Lance says with an airy wave of a hand.

“Worryingly vague when coupled with a villain cackle.”

“I do not villain cackle,” Lance retorts, wounded. “I have the dulcet laugh of an innocent child. The lilting tones of an angelic choir. A refreshingly pure and comforting chuckle, perhaps. I do not _cackle_.”

Ryan raises his shotgun and carefully takes out an operative as he comes around the corner. There’s a short, sharp crunch of cartilage shattering into tiny, bloody bits as Ryan blows the man’s face off. Which, eurgh, bloody mess all over the Atlas’ floors. Lance hopes someone else is gonna clean that up. His days as chores/errand boy are well and truly over. Maybe the Atlas is self-cleaning. That seems like something a sentient space ship would be.

Lance lets his bayard morph into its sniper form and prods the headless body with the barrel. “Think the Atlas is self-cleaning?” He asks Ryan. “Or are we gonna have to get some E-2s in here to deal with this mess.”

Ryan blinks. “E-3s probably, given the clearance they’d need to even step foot on the Atlas.”

Poking the operative a bit more reveals a pair of sonic-bladed razors and some datachips that glitter black and gold with the type of heavy ICE that only comes from a certain set of military contractors. Lance pulls a face and morphs his bayard into a pair of pistols. Without looking up he fires three shots down the hallway and is gratified when his shots are a followed by a short, sharp scream that trickles into a wet whimper. 

“Oh, yeah,” he says as he gets up. “I forget about the entire clearance thing sometimes.”

“I know,” Ryan responds as they meander along the white stretch of Atlas’ hallway to where the operative lies whining in a widening pool of their own blood. “It kinda drives James up a wall.”

Lance sighs expressively. “Poor Jamie. I make his life so much harder than it needs to be. Hi!”

He chirps this last bit to the operative on the ground. The man groans in response. “Yeah, I bet that hurts, the entire ‘got shot three times in the leg’ thing. Maybe next time don’t join a team trying to sneak onto a highly secured, secret sentient warship and try to kill her crew. Makes everyone all pissy.”

“Alien-fucker,” the man grunts like this was some sort of appropriate response. Lance looks at Ryan who shrugs at him.

“I really didn’t think that the rumor mill moved _that_ fast,” Lance comments blithely. 

“I think that was general insult rather than one specifically tailored to you,” Ryan says drily before pressing the muzzle of the M40A6 against the man’s head. “Let’s try that again this time without the insults.”

It’s hard to read the man’s expression through the weird bug-eyed goggles of his infrared optics, but Lance thinks he goes quiet and resigned before biting down on his back molar so hard Lance can hear the tooth crack. He shoots the operative between the eyes before he starts to foam at the mouth.

“I really hate it when they do that,” he complains.

“Shit haunts your dreams,” Ryan agrees. 

They lope down the hallway on bare and bloody feet. Lance tries not to think about how the balls of his feet feel slick and kinda gross, like he’d been walking through river silt. Tries _really_ hard to not think about why his feet feel gross. The space between his shoulder blades itches a little as he’s being watched. He misses his chameleon armour and its cloaking features. Hell, he even misses his paladin armour with its weird plates and completely useless undersuit. 

Anything would be better than wandering around in the open dressed only in a pair of Hunk’s old workout pants that threaten to slide right off his hips even though he’s cinched the drawstring as tight as it can go. Really should have gotten on that whole ‘move your shit into the Atlas’ thing when Shiro’d first mentioned it. But Lance isn’t good with the whole ‘forward planning’ thing and, besides, he spends more of his time bunking with Ryan than he does anywhere else. 

Which, in retrospect, make several things very clear and Lance suspects that he has been, just maybe, a bit of an idiot for a while.

He’s grateful that Ryan is content to keep pace alongside him as chews on a whole series of revelations that really shouldn’t be revelations, but, well, aforementioned idiocy and a really distressing tendency towards willful ignorance. Lance slants a look at Ryan. Just to look at him as much as to try to gauge what might be going on behind those pretty dark eyes. 

Lance’d like to be very clear: his partner is a ridiculously attractive man and looking at him is never any sort of hardship. 

“Think we should go back to the ventilation ducts?” Lance asks after a little bit. 

Ryan looks up at the smooth swath of white wall with a thoughtful expression. “You ever wonder why Atlas even needs something as archaic as ventilation ducts big enough for two full grown men to move through?”

“I did wonder that, but then decided that I really didn’t like where that line of thought went, so put it away since, you know, we were crawling around in them at the time.”

Ryan makes an interested noise.

“It’s like this,” Lance pauses for a moment as they do a quick sweep of the next service hallway. They should be, if Lance remembers the lay out of the Atlas correctly, pretty close to the network of hangers that take up the bottom levels of the ship. “Atlas is sentient, right? Or at least as sentient as the lions, which are kinda like, I don’t know, more sentient than the MFEs but not as sophisticated as whatever AI boyfriend Pidge has coded herself this week, but—”

“Please tell me that you have said those exact words to Pidge.”

“Fuck no! Do I look like I was born without a functioning sense of self-preservation? I’m not _Keith_.”

“I need you to tell her this. I’ve been thinking about what the perfect expression of mortified fury would look like, and I’m almost entirely certain that sentence would produce the feeling exactly in Pidge.”

“You are an evil man,” Lance says with as much dignity as he can summon. “I don’t know why I like you.”

“Are you giving me, architect and high priest of the Church of Putting Up With All Of Your Ridiculous Shit, sass? Also, you love me because I have a fantastic ass.”

Lance sighs, presses his free hand to his chest, and flutters his lashes at Ryan in his best parody of a coquettish young lady. “You really do have a fantastic ass. Like. Ten out of ten. Thank god for squats. Please never skip leg day ever.”

“You had a grand theory about the Atlas, artificial intelligence and ventilation ducts,” Ryan reminds him with an eyeroll. When Ryan shoves at him, Lance catches his hand and tucks himself against Ryan’s side. Ryan lets him lean heavy for a moment, kisses the side of Lance’s head, and then gently shoves him off.

Lance bounces down the hallway with a faint laugh. “Yeah, I mean, not that complicated because, common it’s _me_ \--”

“I don’t know why you do this self-denigration thing,” Ryan interrupts. “It’s not cute.”

Lance shrugs, suddenly uncomfortable. “Habit. Spend two years trapped in a magic space castle with certifiable geniuses and prodigies and you learn to qualify your statements.”

Ryan makes a non-committal noise but doesn’t interject again.

“Anyway, whatever, uh,” it takes a Lance a minute to remember where his point had been going. “Oh! Right. So, Atlas is basically powered by the crystalized remains of the Castle of Lions, which had been tied to Allura’s life force, so now _Atlas_ is tied to her life force. It’s like … tied to her will in ways I’m not sure any of us really understand, but listening to Coran bitch about it, I think they managed to make the Atlas way more, uh, human than some sort of alien intelligence pulled through a quintessence rift with a questionable grasp on mortal concepts like, I don’t know, justice or mercy.”

Both Red and Blue nudge at his thoughts, offended. He mentally rolls his eyes at them because he’s not wrong and they can stand to hear it.

“So, Atlas is trying to be helpful as she best understands how to be from, like, Allura’s subconscious and memories,” Lance concludes with a little flourish of his hands.

Ryan blinks at him. “What does this have to do with ventilation ducts?”

“Oh! Uh. I maybe made Allura watch one too many dumb action movies?” Lance says with a little shrug. “You know the ones where the plucky heroine crawls through a ventilation shaft that should in no way support her weight to get the drop on the villains?”

“And now the Atlas is making ventilation shafts for us?”

Lance spreads his hands in a placating manner. “On the upside they probably won’t collapse under our weight?”

“This is not reassuring.”

“Aaaand they might vanish if Allura stops thinking about ventilation ducts and us being action heroes.”

“ _Really_ not reassuring.”

* * *

Slav reality (324): i told you that you should’ve sent him back to the bridge. now look at what you did. feelings all over the place like a xlor’k in a wormhole

Slav (reality 56292): Technically. I told 21412 to direct Shirogane back to the bridge, not you.

Slav (reality 324): i told him that he needed to care about all possible reality pathways. Also: emotions are for suckers and make the paladins sloppy, try to minimize that.

Slav (reality 21412): I repeat: this is not a discussion memo and all non-continuous reality representatives are banned from this chat.

Slav (reality 56292): I submit my R-substrat to demonstrate that I am, in fact, part of your reality matrix’s substrat-fold and thus a continuous representative.

Slav (reality 324): i submit the following: fu, bitch, make me

Slav (reality 21541) Charming as ever and as compelling.

Slav (reality 324): i’ll compelling your face

Slav (reality 56292): And there’s the sort of reasoned argument that we have come to expect from you 324.

Correct Black Paladin: what the actual fuck

Slav (reality 324): and people complain about my arguments lacking nuance

Slav (reality 235290): 324, your arguments mostly consist of ‘fu’ and ‘make me.’ You are a shameful representative of ourselves in whatever hellhole of a reality you’ve chosen to squat in like the squalid little beast you are.

Slav (reality 324): fu 

Slav (reality 324): But seriously, Shirogane, take your emotions and stuff them in a box for the next two quintants. You can have your screaming meltdown about how you’re a blithering idiot who both jumps to wildly incorrect assumptions and then refuses to actually communicate like a mf adult later. 

Slav (reality 324): we all accept that you have the emotional intelligence of a particularly poorly socialized yupper and some really spectacular control issues that manifest as a ridiculous tendency to take responsibility for literally everything under the sun while denying your own emotional and physical needs, but for right now your avoidant tendencies are working in your favor. 

Slav (reality 7898): are you done berating the Black Paladin about his emotional constipation?

Slav (reality 324) for right now

Correct Black Paladin: jesus. christ.

Slav (reality 324): no need for veneration, though i am rn your savior.

Correct Black Paladin: really

Slav (reality 21541): A statement of questionable veracity.

Slav (reality 324): it’s so cute when you copy Matthew, 21541, it really is

Slav (reality 21541): one of these days I am going to build a device that lets me move between realities for the sole purpose of finding you and slapping you in the face with a trout.

Slav (reality 997235): that’s. very specific? why a trout 

Slav (reality 21541): comedic conventions must be observed.

Slav (reality 324): in a stunning shift of genre conventions that surprise no one, i am going to continue to be the most useful Slav that any of the paladins have had the good fortune to run across. Shirogane! If you harken to my call (spoiler alert: you will) i will tell you how to disarm the quintessence-amplified particle aggregator that your saboteurs seem to think will dislocate the castle-crystal from your particular space-time continuum.

Slav (reality 666): it won’t, but it will make a really big explosion when it malfunctions.

Correct Black Paladin: you have a worrying designation

Slav (reality 666): and you, like a child, point this out in every reality.

Slav (reality 324): time for witty banter is at an end. Shirogane. tell your matesprit to keep the Princess as far from that device as possible, it will latch onto her particular quintessence frequency and try to drain her. Tell him to sit on her if need be. 

Correct Black Paladin: matesprit?

Slav (reality 77823): Keith

Slav (reality 324): birds and bees talk later, focus on not blowing up the Atlas or getting the Princess killed now.

Correct Black Paladin: …

Slav (reality 324): you want her to die? you dithering is how you end up killing her.

Correct Black Paladin: Keith and Griffin carried her out of the engine rooms. 

Correct Black Paladin: those were very inventive threats

Slav (reality 8992): oh! They’ve formed their auspice already. Excellent. That will make things much easier for you.

Slav (reality 21541): Focus. Tell Holt 3 to decouple the eezo-feed from the power matrix.

Correct Black Paladin: Coran says that will make the quintessence filtering system overload and short out all of Atlas’ systems

Slav (reality 324): 21541, you deal with Shirogane. I’ll message Coran.

Slav (reality 21541): Agreed.

Correct Black Paladin: How many of you are there? Do I want to know?

Slav (reality 666): no

* * *

There’s something in the air that makes Lance pause like a doe at the edge of a clearing, scenting for danger and on high alert. He holds up one hand and makes a fist. Ryan flattens himself against the other wall, shotgun at the ready. Lance drops to one knee, fitting his bayard against his shoulder as it shifts to its sniper form, and then gestures towards the door to the hangers with a short jerk of his chin.

Ryan palms open the door lock.

For a long moment nothing moves and Lance thinks, briefly, that maybe his nerves have gotten the better of him, but then the air is torn by the snarl of a fusion rifle being fired in tight confines. Lance spares a second to shoot Ryan an incredulous look. Because who the fuck brings a _fusion rifle_ onto a space ship, much less fires the damned thing. Fucking suicidal idiots, that’s who.

Ryan rolls his eyes expressively before firing his shotgun from the hip, taking out an operative dressed in an eezo-powered tac-suit before he can reload. There’s a pair of shouts of alarm that ring out over the wounded operative’s pained shrieking. Ryan ducks back behind the cargo bay doors with a grimace as the remainder of the merc squad liberally paints the doors with bullet spray.

 _Fucking_ idiots with a gods damned deathwish, Lance thinks with a shake of his head. Ryan punches the doors shut and they sit in silence as the particular _thunk-thunk_ of kinetic ammo uselessly peppers the cargo doors. It’s like they didn’t even realize the damned things were thermal shielded and reinforced with eezo-fused aminiosilicate to protect from just that sort of damage. Lance feels a little bit bad for them, honestly, it must be difficult getting through life while being so stupid. Probably why the entire crew of them have a collective deathwish. 

Well, Lance thinks to himself as he peers down his bayard’s sights, he can help them with their suicidal tendencies. That is definitely a thing he can do.

He jerks his chin at the door again. Ryan gives him incredulous eyebrows. Lance jerks his chin again and gives his bayard in its sniper form a little shake. Ryan shakes his head, but palms open the lock. They keep themselves pressed against the walls to wait out the first volley of aimless fire ( _so_ stupid) before Lance pops around the edge of the doors, targets already acquired in his sights and trigger finger moving without conscious thought. 

He wonders, briefly, if maybe he’s been doing this for too long, getting too comfortable with it, but then a shot whistles past him and all those existential worries go back in their box for later inspection.

Two neat shots take out a pair of ops sitting as sentries at the gaping mouth of their transport shuttle. They crumple silently to the floor. Ryan points two fingers at his own eyes and then flicks them up and to the left. Lance gives him a short nod before dashing towards the questionable cover of a long line of cargo containers secured by energy ties and magnetic clamps. He hits the release button for two of them before spinning on one heel, bayard already shifting down into its rifle form, and firing a short blast at a sleek ghost creeping along Ryan’s six. Ryan spares him a smile and a quick little two finger salute. It’s just a quick white flash of teeth and the barest suggestion of affection before Ryan is back to soldier-focus, but it’s enough to fill Lance’s insides with delighted butterflies.

Which, _still_ not the time, emotions, dang.

Lance squishes himself between two of the cargo containers: braces his feet against one, his back against the other, and then shoves with all his might. Popped free of their magnetic locks the farthest two containers go rocketing the length of the hanger, low grav giving them added momentum as they hurtle towards a cluster of operatives who, Lance guesses, are watching their lives flash before their eyes and finding all of it incredibly stupid. 

He doesn’t wait to see if they scatter out of the way like bowling pins on a perfect strike, just goes charging towards the dark entry of their transport shuttle, trusting Ryan to keep his six clear.

The heavy, bone-rattling sound of a eezo-enhanced combat shotgun firing in rapid succession makes him grin. As a general rule Lance doesn’t like violence, but it is gratifying to know that when dumb motherfuckers with deathwishes come rolling up, him and his partner can answer all their unspoken desires. 

Lance isn’t sure what he was expecting when he comes rolling through the transport’s gaping doors, rifle braced against his shoulder and ready to drop the next dumb motherfucker he sees, but Dr. Colleen Holt braining some dude with their own rifle was definitely not it.

“Uh,” he says all intelligent and savvy, “aren’t you supposed to be on Earth?”

Dr. Holt looks at him for a moment like she’s not real sure what to make of him but is probably exhausted by his mere presence anyway. Lance recognizes the look. He sees it on Pidge’s face any time he talks to her for longer than thirty seconds. The family resemblance is _uncanny_. She sighs. “It’s a long story.”

“Kidnapped for your access codes and maybe thought to be useful as a bargaining chip against Matt who is, let’s be totally honest here, otherwise terrifyingly ruthless?” Lance offers.

“Apparently not that long of a story.”

“Sorry,” Lance says even though he doesn’t know what he’s apologizing for, “they aren’t exactly complicated, these assholes, not off reading Sun Tzu in their spare time. They’re kinda the fire and forget types. Like. Point and zerg.”

Dr. Holt looks at him for a long moment as if she doesn’t quite know how to process that before sputtering a little laugh.

Something in the air changes, the faintest tickle of static electricity prickling over his skin, and Lance lunges for Dr. Holt before his brain really processes. He slams her into the far wall, huddles her up against the bulkhead, and tucks her head to his shoulder as the entire interior of the transport lights up with an arc grenade. Lance hisses as bits of heated shrapnel pepper his skin. He really wants to slap them away, but Dr. Holt and securing the area takes precedence. 

“ _Lance!_ ” Ryan’s shout echoes through the hangers, furious and terrified and promising righteous retribution for anyone in his path.

“Ryan?” Dr. Holt asks softly. She doesn’t try to move from where he’s got her shielded by his own body and the curving wall of the transport. 

Lance makes an agreeing noise low in his throat as he scans the smoking remains of the hold, every electronic device sputtering out little spark and flashing their warning lights like someone’s around to care. Arc grenade managed to fry everything but them and Lance really wonders about the kinds of strategic training these guys have gotten. He really, really does.

Lance pulls Dr. Holt to her feet and staggers to the transport’s smoking doors in time to watch Ryan absolutely curbstomp some asshole in silvered tactical armour with their own sonic-edged razors. Ryan’s still dressed only in the tattered remains of his hospital smock, edges flapping around his back, hem smoking faintly, and he is, without a doubt, the most lethal thing in the room.

Lance likes him _so_ much.

“We’re clear,” Lance says as Ryan comes loping up to them, all dark gleaming skin and murderous fury burning in his eyes. “We’re good, and hey!” Lance holds up Dr. Holt’s hand and waves it at Ryan. “Look who I found.”

* * *

Slav (reality 324): so. everything is shit and we have to fix it

Slav (reality 324): again

Alfor’s Left Hand: I hear you are the reason that Number 3 and Griffin just picked up Allura and carried her screaming from the room.

Slav (reality 324): the disrupter has a quintessence-frequency identification device that allows it to locate acceptable quintessence forms that allows it to be self-replenishing. We both know the Princess’ unique signature would immediately register and she does not currently have the reserves available to survive such an assault.

Alfor’s Left Hand: what a hateful little device.

Slav (reality 324): indeed.

Slav (reality 324): you need to keep her alive, whatever the cost. Paladins can be replaced. She cannot. Trust me when I say everything goes spectacularly to shit if she dies.

Alfor’s Left Hand: that is an alarmingly cold view of things.

Slav (reality 324): i am close to the last one left alive in a dying reality where the rift is steadily expanding and eating the entirety of the space-time continuum while its furthest edge steadily drains the quintessence from the fabric of universe like a knitter undoing an unsatisfactory row. 

Slav (reality 324): hope has died here, and it started with her.

Alfor’s Left Hand: I am sorry. 

Slav (reality 324): don’t be. i allowed this to happen. i will live with the mistake. you, however, do not need to.

Alfor’s Left Hand: who created this device? Is it a standard element in your event matrixes or is this reality specific?

Slav (reality 324): both of these are excellent questions.

Slav (reality 324): the second is easier than the first: it is a common element in my event matrixes. Not as common as, say, ‘the Red lion.’ But common.

Slav (reality 324): as for who built it.

Slav (reality 324): well, that is the 1,000,000 gac question, isn’t it? because somehow, i doubt earthling science is capable of it. i could be wrong. they did figure out how to refine element zero before they actually achieved ftl travel so their entire scientific development is fubar

Alfor’s Left Hand: I have disengaged the device. 

Alfor’s Left Hand: (also stop berating Number 1, poor boy is under a lot of stress)

Alfor’s Left Hand: unfortunately, I believe I recognize core elements of this design.

Slav (reality 324): oh? that's ominous, all things considered.

* * *

The space between Lance’s shoulder blades itches. 

It takes a monumental act of will and the memory of his abuela chiding him to stand up straight to keep from hunching against it. He feels awkward, underdressed (they really need to find clothes, like, asap, as much as he likes the view of Ryan’s toned ass flexing with every step it’s not a view he really wants to share with the world) and kinda like he’s been caught skipping class. 

Dr. Colleen Holt keeps pace beside him, eyes carefully averted from his bare chest, Ryan’s bare ass, the bloody streaks along the walls. It’s almost adorable how hard she tries to preserve their collective dignity. He kinda wants to tell her that they don’t have any dignity left to preserve, but he figures that’d be rude.

He’s achingly aware that he’s found Pidge’s mom, that he’s found _Matt’s_ mom, breaking her way out being held hostage by shitty assassins. Lance is pretty sure that both Holt siblings are going to flip their collective and individual shit once they figure it out.

Lance really hopes he’s not in the room when they do it.

They give her a shotgun and a pair of Occam razors before leaving the hanger. Dr. Holt (‘Colleen,’ she’d _insisted_ but Lance still feels like his abuelo is gonna materialize and box his ears for being disrespectful) handles both with a grace that sets something inside him at ease. He’s not sure why he’s surprised that she’d taken the razors and shoved them into her boots without a second glance. He knows he shouldn’t be surprised at how easily she cradles the shotgun in her arms. She lived through Sendak’s invasion. She’s seen combat. Lance knows this, but something in his gut still coils tight and unhappy at the idea even while the more sensible bits of him are pleased as punch to have another person watching their blind spots.

“So,” Dr. Holt says, interrupting his thoughts with a soft, gentle voice. Lance eyes her suspiciously. He knows better than to trust that tone. “You are the Red Paladin?”

“Blue,” Lance corrects. “I just pilot Red for the time being. It’s like being on a time share.”

Dr. Holt makes a thoughtful sound. Not disbelieving, precisely, but the exact noise teachers used to make when Lance’d mangled the pronunciation of some English word. It makes him want to squirm and bolt for the exits. 

“Why?” Lance asks, trying to head her off at the conversational path, “do you want a ride? Because, like, Pidge is the one who added all the cool bells and whistles to her lion.”

Both Blue and Red shove at his thoughts with that, hurt and offended, and Lance sends them soothing nonsense. For ancient, semi-sentient war machines they were spectacularly bad at the whole conversational jujitsu thing. 

Dr. Holt shoots him a sideways glance that suggests she knows exactly what he’s about. Which. Problem. He’s gotten used to dealing with Pidge who can’t tell a conversational gambit from a landmine. He gives her his most charming smile and she narrows her eyes at him. Lance shrugs expressively. “Well,” he says as sweet and innocent as he knows how, using the exact tone that makes Pidge roll her eyes and dismiss him in under thirty seconds, “now that you are here, I’m sure she’d be willing to give you a ride home. I’d be willing to do it, but we’re supposed to, you know, play dead for a little while. Though now that Admiral Fuckface, whoops, _Udina_ , has sent assassins I’m not sure if that plan is still in play.”

Dr. Holt makes another of those little thoughtful noises. Lance _really_ wishes she’d stop doing that.

“Though I guess if you are up here rather than down there,” Lance punctuates this with little gestures with his bayard that make Ryan bite back a grin, just a little quirk of his lips but Lance sees it. “Then we need some sort of cover story. Doing field research? Do botanists do field research in space? I feel like I should know that but I’m not sure the Garrison ever really bothered to teach us much about botany beyond, you know, survival training and that was mostly ‘don’t eat anything in neon colours’ and not, like, serious shit.”

“You ramble far more than I was expecting,” Dr. Holt observes.

Lance really wants to ask why Dr. Holt was expecting much of anything from him, but he figures that nothing good could come with that answer. He really hopes they run across some more PX rangers because he could use the distraction. On the long list of things he wants to be doing today, making small talk with Pidge’s mom is not one of them. 

“It’s a stress response,” he says instead of any of the other things he wants to say, “like squid ink.”

Ryan snorts then, small and amused, and Lance is incredibly grateful to have him at his side. 

Dr. Holt watches them with that thoughtful little expression but doesn’t say anything. The silence would be awkward, Lance thinks (and there is nothing he hates more than awkward silences), except for the ambient air of anticipation that holds all of them.

He doesn’t think that any assassins are gonna jump out and shout ‘boo,’ but Lance feels like they ought to. The waiting is playing merry hell with his nerves.

Atlas’ hallways are silent as they move through them. Long stretches of institutional white lit only by little blue emergency lights along the baseboards, and Lance finds himself longing for Allura. Wanting her steady presence and certainty. He holds the memory of the way she’d kissed him before they split up close like a candle against self-doubt. 

Ryan bumps into him, a little hip-check that knocks Lance back into the present, and Lance flashes him a quick grin. They didn’t have time for him to be all weird and angsty for no particular reason. People to shoot, doctors to save, and all that.

“Twenty-five in chameleon armour,” Lance says into the silence and he can feel the way Dr. Holt jerks a little at his sudden words. “Fifteen in heavy tactical gear, and how many engineers?”

“At least four,” Dr. Holt answers, sounding a little surprised at the shift in conversation. “But they didn’t line up to give me a precise headcount.”

Lance laughs a little at her tart tone while he does quick mental math. “I think we’ve taken out most of their rearguard, but I haven’t seen an engineer yet.”

Ryan makes a little humming noise of agreement.

“I think they were headed towards the Atlas’ core,” Dr. Holt says and Lance feels the tension drain out of him like water disappearing into sand.

“Oh,” he says. “They’re fucked then.”

Dr. Holt blinks at him, clearly not following.

“Coran’s there and Allura was on her way to him,” Lance explains.

“Jamie will make a straight line to the Princess as well,” Ryan adds. 

Lance considers this. “Yeah, probably. He’s got a whole weird fealty thing going on there that I'm positive is a kink or something.”

“Please say that to his face. Please.”

“Do you want me to die? I swear you do, the way you keep trying to bait me into saying things to people who have no concept of proportional response,” Lance retorts with an incredulous look. “Because that’s a great way to get my ass reassigned to frozen wastes of Mars or something.”

“You’re a Voltron Paladin,” Dr. Holt interjects, making Lance jolt. He’d actually forgotten she was listening in the depths of his horrified contemplation of all the ways James would make him _pay_ for pointing out his really hilarious authority kink. “I don’t think that there is any way for you to be reassigned anywhere,” Dr. Holt continues as if completely unaware of his little freak out. “I’m pretty positive you are stuck in Arizona with the rest of us.”

“It’s Jamie,” Lance tells her seriously. “The things that man does with paperwork are unbelievable.”

Ryan nods seriously. Dr. Holt looks between the two of them and laughs.

* * *

Slav (reality 324): …

Alfor’s Left Hand: …

Slav (reality 324): you know, i’m not even surprised at this point

Alfor’s Left Hand: In the reality pathways that you have analyzed have any successfully, I don’t know, leashed the pair of them? Corralled them? Kept them from otherwise designing delightful little gadgets that, if left unattended or in the wrong hands, destroy the very fabric of reality?

Alfor’s Left Hand: often by killing Allura?

Alfor’s Left Hand: I am beginning to wonder at the regularity with which they concocted such devices.

Slav (reality 324): in their defense, they normally feel very bad when they unravel the very fabric of reality.

Slav (reality 324): normally

* * *

Lance stares at the door to the main communications array and sighs. Even through the supposedly sound-proofed and reinforced door he can hear Pidge yelling. Which. _eurgh_. Ryan shoots him a look that’s two parts amused, and one point resigned. Maybe if they are very lucky, they can lob Dr. Holt at Pidge and then run away in the resulting chaos.

“Okay,” he says when Pidge’s yelling hits that particular pitch and tenor that she only achieves when she’s both stressed as fuck and terrified. He cradles his rifle a little closer to his chest as if it were a particularly bulky teddy bear and jerks his chin towards the door lock. “Hit it.”

There’s a dry little cough right at his left elbow and he doesn’t bother to give Dr. Holt a side-long look. Honestly, he’s just kinda glad she at least tried to hide her laugh. Ryan doesn’t bother to hide his judgment. Just gives him the driest look and sighs. Lance gives him big eyes until he palms the lock. 

Lance is pretty impressed the way a little red dot immediate lights up his forehead. “Down girl,” he tells Ina. “The cavalry has arrived.”

“You’re only the cavalry if you are actually solving a problem,” Pidge says in that particular pissy tone she gets when her coding isn’t going the way she likes. “Otherwise you’re just a three ringed circus without a circus master.”

And there is why Lance’d kinda hoped he’d be able to avoid Pidge until they were all safely back on Earth and settled into their respective routines. Nothing and no one is as sharp tongued as their resident pint-sized genius when things aren’t going her way.

Rather than responding to that Lance plasters on his widest, dopiest grin and grabs Dr. Holt’s hand. He files away for later the way she lets him wave her hand at her daughter like a marionette on a string. “Look who I found,” he chirps. “A solution to all your problems.”

The way Pidge’s eyes go huge and round is both really cute and really heartbreaking.

“ _Mom!_ ”

Lance neatly steps out of the way as Pidge barrels into her mother’s arms. He catches for half a second the way Dr. Holt gives him a sharp, assessing look. It’s a look that promises trouble later, but for right now Lance is pretty sure Pidge’ll be enough of a distraction that he’ll be able to eel away with Ryan in the not too distant future.

“You secured the hangers?” Ina asks as she floats up to inspect him and Ryan. She makes a little moue of displeasure at the little burns that dot his shoulders and arms from the arc grenade.

“Well,” Lance says in the same low tone. “We killed all the motherfuckers in there, so secured for the time being. Didn’t want to be split up.”

Ina nods like this is the answer she expects. “We need to find you armour,” she says instead of giving voice to any of the worries he can see brewing in her eyes. “You’ve gotten hurt again.”

Lance makes a little dismissive noise and flicks his fingers like he’s brushing away dust. “Don’t worry about it, baby girl, we’re bad asses.”

“Comms secure?” Ryan asks before Ina can argue about it.

Ina shakes her head. “There’s a localized dampening field inhibiting all signal transmission both to and from the Atlas,” she says even as she wraps a cold hand around Lance’s wrist to keep him from eeling out of the room. “We were having a,” Ina pauses with a little frown, “disagreement as to its origin.”

“There’s no way for a dampening field this powerful to be generated off-site,” Pidge snaps, fluffing up in her mother’s arms like an adorable baby lioness, all hissing and spitting and Lance _really_ wants to somewhere else before she decides to start sharpening her claws on people. “The rate of conversion doesn’t allow for it to have this type of strength if it’s being generated planet-side.”

“I hypothesize,” Ina says without looking at Pidge, “that there may be a secondary vessel orbiting the Atlas maintaining the suppression field.”

Lance sucks on his teeth and raises an eyebrow at Ryan, who gives him a little shrug. Lance lifts his rifle a little before letting it morph into what he’s pretty sure is an Altean version of a sunspear particle rifle. Ryan frowns at him.

“Pants,” Ryan says.

“Did you two just make an entire plan with nothing but facial expressions and weird twitches,” Hunk wants to know. Lance shrugs, barely listening, as he mentally maps out the path to the nearest observation deck. “You guys did,” Hunk concludes. “That’s both impressive and kinda creepy, honestly.”

“Vero?” Ryan asks.

“Nadia,” Lance offers instead. Ryan sighs and then nods. 

“Both,” Ina interjects. She gives them a bland look when they both raise their eyebrows at her.

“And you guys aren’t paying the rest of us any attention, are you?” Hunk asks. “Like, totally not listening at all.”

“I’m listening,” Lance says as Ina frowns at Ryan’s torn and blooded hospital smock. “I can multitask.” Ina flaps the edge of Ryan’s smock at him and Ryan swats her hands away. “Okay, yeah. Pants.”

“Secondary armory is likely untouched,” Ina says. “Nadia went to secure it with Vero. Go there. Pants are not optional for spacewalks.”

“But the view is so pretty,” Lance tells her with a grin. Ina swats him and Ryan sighs.

“You guys aren’t seriously leaving, are you?” Pidge says. She glares up at them. “We haven’t been able to secure the internal comms system yet. We don’t know where anyone is.”

Lance pats the top her head, snatching his hand back right as she snaps her teeth at him. “Don’t worry about it, Pidgeon,” he chirps, bright and sunny. “You go be a brilliant, terrifying hacker gremlin and we’ll handle the grunt work.”

“Grunt work,” Pidge repeats flatly, but Lance is already half way out the door. Dr. Holt watches him with an expression that honestly worries him a little bit, but he’s too focused on getting the hell out of the room to really worry about.

“Yep,” Lance says, making the ‘p’ pop in a way that makes Pidge’s entire face twist up in disgust. “Find dudes, shoot dudes, return to base. Pretty classic definition of grunt work.”

“I don’t think we should be splitting up,” Hunk says, worry all over his expression. “It was a bad idea before, and I think it’s a bad idea now.”

Lance shrugs as Ina and Ryan move to flank him. “Don’t worry, big dude, we handle shit like this all the time. We’ve got it down.”

“Last time you were handling 'shit',” Pidge says in that same flat tone, “it got you killed. Literally. I'm not sure how to break that down into a simpler concept. You. Died.”

“Enh,” Lance says with a little hand wave. “They don’t have a building to drop on us this time. You two go be certifiable geniuses. We’ll go kill people. Easy!”

He doesn’t give them a chance to respond, just tows Ina out of the room after him. Pidge says something sharp and vicious that he doesn’t even register. Hunk tries calling his name, but Lance is out the door and half way down the hall before he can even get to the second syllable. 

“I don’t think your unit is working at optimal cohesion,” Ina says as she trails after him. Lance doesn’t look at her even when he hears her pick up her pace to keep up with him. He rolls his shoulders to try to relieve tension there. “I think there are fundamental, um, problems of communication.”

“Y’all are fucked up,” Ryan says.

“Tell me something I don’t fucking know,” Lance snaps. He stops in the middle of the hallway. Rubs his eyes with one hand and sighs. “Can we please go find dumb motherfuckers to shoot and then talk about how the whole paladin thing is an epic shitshow later?” Lance presses the heel of his hand against his eyes because _ugh_ did he ever hate dwelling on dumb emotional bullshit. "Please?"

Ina cuddles up to him for a moment, presses her forehead to his shoulder, stands with him as he works to stick his mess of emotions back in their boxes. Ryan pushes a hand through Lance’s hair and Lance tilts his head to chase the touch. When he opens up his eyes Ryan’s watching him. Ryan tightens his hand for a second, tugging at Lance’s hair, and then lets go.

“Pants,” Ryan says instead of pressing the point, and Lance loves him more than a little for it.


	15. warning: noun incoming

“This does not fill me with confidence.”

“That’s because you’re a big old worry wart in the form of our hot commanding officer and you hide your love for us under icy looks of disdain and the really sexy way you push your glasses up with one finger right before you sigh.”

“That made no sense even by your normal metrics of incomprehensible and rambling explanations.”

“Like that!” Nadia says and points before snapping her fingers in delight as Veronica pushes her glasses up before pressing two slender fingers to her temples. It’s a really elegant gesture. It fills Nadia with something soft and shivering every time Veronica does it. “Just like that.”

Veronica sighs, deep and heavy and it makes her chest move in supremely interesting ways that Nadia really wishes she had more time to appreciate.

“And there’s the sigh,” Nadia says with a grin as Veronica rolls her eyes.

“The fact that you have managed to not only make it to the age of majority but also become a member of an elite fighting force is a fact that never ceases to amaze me.”

“Yeah, I know.” Nadia skips deeper into the armory, peering at all the pretty toys it holds, resisting the urge to run her fingers over them through an act of willpower she honestly didn’t think herself capable of. She can feel the way her ponytail bounces and sways like a banner. She knows she should be more concerned about the state of things—assassins blah blah blah trying to commandeer the Atlas blah blah blah Jamie and Lancey and ‘Lura all hurt and still fighting blah blah blah—but she’s so damned happy to be up and out of the hospital bed that she honestly just doesn’t care. She’s _freeeee_. Alhamdulillah. “I’m amazing. If you ask nice, I’ll give you my phone number.”

“I am going to strangle you with your own hair.”

Nadia runs her tongue around the outside of her teeth and grins. “Di~irty!”

Veronica sighs, drops whatever bit of technological wizardry she’d been fiddling with, and pins Nadia with a Look. 

Nadia shrugs. “I mean, we don’t both need to be here to hold down the fort,” she says in the face of all of Veronica’s judgement, which is, Nadia would like to point out, a lot of judgment. 

“You have literally an entire armory and Jamie is _hurt_. You know he’s not doing anything sensible like hiding out in, like, say, the medical wards or letting Keith do the heavy lifting. He’s off trying to be a Big Damned Hero because he’s basically a pile of mental health issues in a trench coat and he needs _someone_ to shout him down.”

There’s a soft little noise like Vero’s trying not to laugh and failing so it comes out as a series of little sniggering grunts that are way cuter than they have any right to be. Nadia waits until Veronica sighs again.

“I’m right, you know,” she says.

“Yes,” Veronica says with a little head tilt. “But what makes you think that you are the person for this particular task?”

“Because Jamie never tells me ‘no’ about anything,” Nadia replies with a little grin. She twirls her ponytail around one finger. “He bitches and he moans and he gives me a million reasons why it’s not possible, but at the end of the day he does what I want.”

“You know,” Veronica’s voice takes on a tone that’s both resigned and amused, but she’s got that fond little half-smile that makes the corner of her mouth kick up and her eyes crinkle. “I wasn’t entirely sure you were aware of that—the fact that you lot have him wrapped around your little fingers.” Nadia rolls her eyes and makes a face that she feels is quite expressive. “I’ll be sure keep that in mind for the future.”

“Great,” Nadia says as she tries not to bounce on the balls of her feet. She’s so ready to _go_ that she’s near to vibrating right out of her skin. She’s never taken well to bedrest. “Now that we’re all agreed, can I go?”

“Not quite,” Veronica says and then arches an eyebrow at Nadia’s piteous whine. “We’re in an armory and you want to go charging about in nothing but a hospital smock?”

“It’s worked out so far.” 

And honestly the look on the faces of the two operatives that had been unlucky enough to stumble across them will be a thing that Nadia’ll treasure for the rest of her life. They’d been so offended at having their faces beat in by a girl half their size in a half tied off hospital gown. So offended. It’d been _great_.

“Let’s not continue to test fate. Ah, there we are.”

Veronica emerges from the center of the armory with a bit of silvery-black fabric and a pair of stout boots. Nadia can’t contain her happy gasp as she bounces forward to clutch the fabric to her chest. 

“Chameleon armour!”

“Yours to be precise,” Veronica says in that tart tone she takes when she’s trying not to show that she thinks they’re being cute. “I made sure that the Atlas had spares set aside for your entire squadron given the way you tend to destroy them.”

“I don’t destroy them,” Nadia protests as she wiggles out of her hospital robe and into the armour. It’s cool and slick against her skin, wraps around her like a lover’s embrace and she sighs with pleasure. Spinning on one heel she presents her back to Vero, who does up her clips at a remarkable speed. “It’s not my fault the first generation of the armour was so fiddly you couldn’t even take a shotgun blast without the entire optical masking array shorting out.”

Veronica tugs her ponytail once, hard, and sighs. “It’s a miracle you are alive,” she says, “honestly it is. Let’s try to get through this without any senseless heroics, hm?”

Nadia spins back around to face her and fires of a snappy little salute just for the way it makes Vero quirk her little half smile and roll her eyes. “Ma’am, yes, ma’am.”

“I’m not sure what I did in a past life to deserve you,” Veronica says, but she’s still got her half-smile on and her eyes are all crinkly behind her glasses.

“Banged a nun and made her really happy?” Nadia suggests and then smirks at the way Veronica sputters.

“Get,” Veronica orders once she’s done spluttering at Nadia’s sheer audacity. “Go find your squadron leader and his Princess.”

Nadia slides a pair of sonic-edged razors into their sheaths and then holsters a neat little plasma pistol. Nasty piece of work with the heat sink modified so she can fire both chambers right off without any of that overheating nonsense—Ina’d clearly been tinkering around with the weapons cache again. She looks up at Veronica, mission-serious, and cocks her head. “Orders?”

“Send James and Allura to the main communications array,” Veronica decides after a little pause. “Allura, with her link to the Atlas, should be able to brute force a network across the entirety of the ship similar to the main comms relay for the Lions.”

Nadia rolls her shoulders before settling the infrared goggles firmly over her face making everything go slightly green. “And if they’ve got anyone with them, like, say Keith?”

“Why would they have Keith with them?”

Nadia pries her goggles off to give Veronica a long look with a lot of eyebrows. 

Veronica grimaces. “That’s going to be a mess,” she says mostly to herself before huffing out a deep breath. “ _If_ ,” Nadia rolls her eyes expressively at the emphasis even though Vero can’t see it behind her goggles, “Keith is with them then take Keith and go secure the main armory. I doubt this gaggle of trumped up amateurs have figured out how to tunnel under Atlas’ ICE, but the less time we give them to figure it out the better.”

“Acknowledged,” Nadia says. The world seems still and quiet now that she’s in her armour and got her orders. 

“Oh,” Veronica adds, making Nadia half-turn back to consider her. “And try to not die.”

* * *

Holt 1: testing?

Slav (reality 324): dr holt i presume

Holt 1: 324, watching old earth holos again?

Slav (reality 324): i’m trapped in a decrepit lab on the ass end of nowhere as my reality slowly fractures and dies. don’t judge me.

Holt 1: I would never. Is my son with you?

Alfor’s Left Hand: Matthew is indeed! He is a very efficient young man when he puts his mind to things. My commendations upon his rearing.

Holt 1: Thank you. I’m pleased with him. I am going to take that to mean he’s been rather violent?

Alfor’s Left Hand: Exceptionally!

Slav (reality 324): he’s got a talent for it. truly. it is very impressive. we are very impressed.

Holt 1: Don’t get smart.

Slav (reality 324): unfortunately, it appears to be a terminal condition for me—being smart. i've got degrees in it and everything. why are you looking for your wayward spawn?

Holt 1: I have my youngest and she has already proven herself to be both feral and alarmingly focused on murdering large swaths of the upper echelons of UEMS. I am going to guess my eldest is not much better. Kindly tell him that his mother is both safe and perfectly capable of taking care of herself. Do remind him who raised him.

Alfor’s Left Hand: Should I use those exact words?

Holt 1: If it isn’t too much of a bother. Also, send him along to secure the bridge when you’re done with him, if you would. I did overhear that our would-be saboteurs intended to fake some sort of communication to suggest the Atlas is in revolt against UEMS chain of command.

Slav (reality 56292): I _told_ you that returning them to the bridge was the optimal reality pathway!

Slav (reality 324): banned.

[ _Slav (reality 56292) has been banned from this chat!_ ]

Slav (reality 324): i hate it when my alternate reality selves are correct about anything. gives them fat heads. it’s such a fucking unimaginative plan anyway. it's embarrassing. i’m embarrassed for them.

Holt 1: Isn’t it just? I’m afraid there’s a certain problem with my species where the amount of stupidity in a situation is directly proportional to the amount of capital threatened.

Alfor’s Left Hand: I feel that’s unfair.

Holt 1: Trust me. It really, really isn’t. But send my eldest along once you’ve got a moment. Though you may want to keep either Shiro or Allura for their connection to the Atlas. It will make coordination easier. I have a feeling, a bad one, that Lance is about to try something reckless and terribly heroic.

Alfor’s Left Hand: The poor boy does make a habit of it.

Holt 1: Does he? Katie hasn’t mentioned it.

Slav (reality 324): is it the thing with sunspear? that's an interestingly ambitious plan

Holt 1: ‘thing with the sunspear’? 

Alfor’s Left Hand: haven’t we had enough of those dreadful devices?

Slav (reality 324): this one is at least of Altean design and thus not inclined to malfunction and zap young squadron leaders, rendering their ability to do risk assessments completely zoid.

Alfor’s Left Hand: ah! He’s figured out how to shift his bayard to a sunspear. Clever lad. Blaytz would’ve liked him quite a bit.

Holt 1: Jamie, unfortunately, just comes this way any time his squadron is part of the assessment. Best to make Ina do the calculations—she’s got a cooler head on her shoulders.

Slav (reality 324): as fascinating as all this information is, i think you’d best go back to focusing on ridding the Atlas of your little vermin infestation. your reprieve is coming to an end.

Holt 1: you are much more pleasant here than in other group chats.

Slav (reality 324): lies and slander. 

Slav (reality 324): i am unpleasant in all my interactions and i won’t hear otherwise.

Slav (reality 324): it’s only that you two aren’t as mind-boggling idiotic as my alternative reality selves. more proactive too. less faffing about moaning about third order consequences.

Holt 1: I’m touched.

Alfor’s Left Hand: I always did wonder what you would be like without the crippling anxiety.

Holt 1: an angry, profane little weasel that badgers Shiro about his maladjusted emotional coping mechanisms. Apparently.

Slav (reality 324): oh no, i still have the anxiety. it's just that every awful thing has come to pass and now all that’s left is to face what you fear and run at it screaming.

* * *

Nadia is almost disappointed that Atlas’ hallways are still and quiet and empty the way hallways in horror movies are empty—only shadows and her own imagination to keep her company.

Scratch that. She’s absolutely disappointed. She’s got her shiny toys and a lot of pent up energy to expend. It’s downright rude that all the little ghosts in their fancy armour have up and disappeared just as she’s gotten tech-ed up and ready to rumble. But the hallways remain quiet and very nearly pretty in the pale blue light thrown up by Atlas’ emergency runners. She trots along, resisting the urge to grind her teeth, and wonders at the persistent silence. 

It’s like a sore tooth and she can’t stop poking at it.

An idea hits her like a lightning flash, pulling her to a stop so she stands blinking like an idiot in the middle of the hallway. Cocking her head to the side, her ponytail sweeps along her shoulders, she tilts her face up to consider the pale ceiling. “Atlas?” She asks, not that she expects any sort of answer. “Are you shifting hallways so I don’t come across any of our unwanted guests?”

The ceiling, naturally, says nothing back but Nadia refuses to let herself be fooled. She’s read up on the Voltron Lions and the crystalized Castle of Lions and all the rest of the technological bullfuckery that makes up Altean engineering shenanigans. She crosses her arms over chest and tries to glare at the ceiling the best she can while feeling kind of like a git for talking at thin air.

The silence persists, thick and still and vaguely judgmental. Nadia sighs.

“Okay, whatever, clearly we need to do something about your voice protocols because this is ridiculous,” Nadia grumbles. “Can you at least shift the hallways around so I take the fastest path to Jamie? I mean, if you aren’t going to give me any assholes whose dumb faces I can beat in.”

A soft hissing of displaced air raises the fine hair along her arms, the back of her neck, making her feel like a cat all fluffed up and growling at dust motes. The walls don’t move so much as they give the _suggestion_ of movement, something in the way the shadows crawl slow and unnatural along the length of the hallway, eating distance so she stands bracketed by yawning pits of darkness on either side. It’s a fight not to shiver all over but she manages it.

“Cool,” Nadia says slowly. “That’s a cool trick. Very impressive. Uh. Can you maybe point me in the direction that I need to go? Like, follow the red lights to the emergency exists, do not assist others before securing your own gasmask. In the case of an … emergency …. Huh,” Nadia finds herself petering off in bemusement. She knows she’s got a bad habit of rambling, verbal squid ink in Lance’s words, when stressed out, but she thinks silent, sentient ships that reorder themselves upon command (suggestion?) are definitely a reason to babble. She stares at the little red lights the line the hallway, but only on her left side. “Right. Stay on the left side. Got it. Good. Cool. _Fuck_.”

Nadia trots along feeling very much like Alice following a yellow brick road, or maybe that was Gretel with the caterpillar, or, wait, no—Dorothy and bread crumbs. Whatever, she’s not the film buff and it’s not like Ryan can hear her thoughts. She’s pretty sure at least. He does have these moments of really weird perception that he brushes off a ‘sniper perception.’ So sometimes, just sometimes, she wonders.

Now she’s babbling inside her head. Great. 

Little red lights wink at her as she passes them, turn blue as she puts them behind her, and, eventually, are eaten by the darkness following her. Shit is _weird_. She is going to have words with Jamie’s Princess about her creepy sentient spaceship. Or maybe the Captain. Someone. She objects and she’s going to tell someone how much she objects because this shit is upsetting.

A gentle breeze whispers through her hair, soft and refreshing, except she can’t tell where it’s coming from. Just an omnidirectional hiss of wind that reminds her of golden wheat fields in the dying days of summer. Which would be a lovely, relaxing mental image if you didn’t know the stories of old gods stalking the harvest waiting for their sacrifices.

Sometimes she really hates her imagination and the way it’ll get up and run away all on its own.

That little hissing breeze kisses her brow again, just a soft feathering thing across her temples, and Nadia’s skin crawls.

The hallway behind her isn’t exactly quiet, just muted, a soft susurration following her steps. The shadows slither towards her as the Atlas reorders itself in her wake.

Nadia can’t help the way she speeds up from a little trot to a jog. From a jog to half-run. From a half-run to a dead sprint—until she’s racing through hallways as if chased by malak al-mawt. Her lungs burn and her legs ache, but she doesn’t stop as the darkness unspools before her in a never-ending line of pale white walls and tiny red lights. She pants opened-mouth as she turns a gentle corner and the darkness gives way to a dead end occupied by three figures bathed in a soft golden light.

Nadia hits James at full-tilt, slamming him into the wall and burying face into his bare shoulder. 

“What the f—” James manages to gasp out before Nadia wraps her arms around him, clinging like a limpet. She pulls her goggles off to better hide her face against his shoulder. They hit the ground with a soft little _thunk_. She thinks she hears someone suck in a startled breath. There’s a soft exchange in whispers around them, but Jamie is solid and real under her fingers and she doesn’t give a fuck.

“Okay,” James says quietly as he gathers her against him. She knows she’s shaking from head to toe, every part of her trembling like a horse run too far, too fast, but she can’t stop. “Okay.”

“Enemy?” Keith asks, because of course he does.

Nadia pulls away from James, just enough for him to tilt her chin up to study her. One dark eyebrow goes up because he knows her. “Amnesia?” he asks with a terrible, mocking smile lurking around the edges of his expression.

She punches him, hard, in the kidneys. “Jackass,” she grumbles as he curls away from her laughing. “That game is the _worst_. I am never doing another retro-gaming night with you ever again.”

Nadia points at Allura, who stands watching her wrapped in nothing thin sheet. She looks like sex given mortal form. “Your spaceship is the worst.”

Allura wrinkles her nose cutely. “I’m not sure Atlas is mine. Can one own a sentient starship?”

“The. Worst,” Nadia repeats with emphasis. 

“What happened?” Keith asks, awkward in his impatience and she see the way it strains at him—pushes the boundaries of his non-existent social skills.

Nadia drags the hair tie out of her hair to rake fingers through her wild mane rather than answer. James makes a little gesture with two fingers and she spins so he can sink his hands in her hair, gentle and firm, to gather her hair back up into its high, bouncy ponytail. She lets him drag his fingers through her hair, hard and a little mean. It centers her. Pulls her back out of her head and into her body. James tugs and pull at her, moves her whole head as he scoops up her hair, until the trembles slow and the shivering of her skin stops. 

She blows out a breath and is grateful no one comments on how it shakes.

Allura watches her with those big, pretty blue eyes that see way more than Nadia is ever really comfortable with. Jamie’s Princess cocks her head to the side, like a dainty hunting hawk, and blinks slow and thoughtful. “You should be careful what you ask of Atlas,” Allura says, sweet and innocent and on just this side of creepy, “because sometimes she answers.”

“No shit,” Nadia says and then grins to take the sting out her words. “You think she’d be less creepy with a voice, or more creepy? I can’t decide.”

Allura scrunches up her face, all cute little girl thoughtful, and then shrugs. It’s Ryan’s slow, arrogant roll of his shoulders on Allura’s delicate frame. Which. _Huh_. 

“The Atlas reordered itself for you?” Keith asks, which shifts things off of how Allura is being just a little strange and fae and its disturbingly hot. (Nadia just maybe has some issues she should address with her self-destructive tendencies.) Nadia thinks about kissing him in gratitude but decides that would probably be weird. 

Everything is weird. Nadia kinda hates it. She shrugs, trying for disaffected and nonchalant and probably just comes off ‘awkward bitch.’ Oh well. “Yeah, I asked her to take me the straightest route from point A to point B.”

“ _Straight_ ,” James mutters under his breath. Says it because he’s an immature asshole at his core. Says it because it brings her down to normal. Says it because he knows it makes her bite her lips to keep from grinning. Because, hah, _straight_.

Nadia steps on his foot.

James yelps and dances backwards from her. Allura laughs, a high, infectious sound like tinkling crystal, clear, rushing water, and every other pretty sound Nadia can think of. Keith frowns at her, poor serious soul, and moves like he’s gonna check on James before stopping himself. Which. Also. _Huh_. Today is determined to be all kinds of interesting.

Allura sighs, high and breathy, and both boys snap to attention. Which. Also. Again. _Huh_. Neither of them says a blessed thing, just watch her with sharp eyes and tight expressions. James and Keith step together to block what are, Nadia guesses, the main double doors to the creepy, white cleanroom housing the crystal that powers the whole fucking Atlas.

Nadia’s moving before she can really register it when Allura sways, just a little, on her feet. Catches their pretty Princess by both elbows. They blink at each other for a second. Allura frowns, tries to shake off Nadia’s hands and then, no lie, pouts when Nadia refuses to let go. A full-on sulking pout with her nose all wrinkled up, bottom lip all fat and jutting out just a little, eyes all round with petulance. 

“Are you sulking at me right now?” Nadia asks.

“No.”

Bottom lip sticks out a little more. Nadia thinks if she didn’t have both Allura’s arms on lock she’d be crossing them. 

“You _are_.” 

This is a revelation. An experience. Nadia isn’t real sure what sort of experience it is, but it’s definitely a whole ass set of memories she’s got now. Allura wrapped in a thin little sheet stripped from a hospital bed, hair a mess of tangled curls, feet bare and blood, and sulking like a sixteen-year-old who just got told she couldn’t go to the college house party. What the entire fuck.

Allura makes a face at her. “I am not,” she says imperiously. Or would be imperious if she wasn’t also sulking like a teenager told she can’t go to the dance. “That would be undignified.”

“Girl,” Nadia says incredulously. “You’re acting like I did when my daddy told me I couldn’t take the hover out to do cliff dives.”

“Nice to know you’ve always had a distressing lack of self-preservation instinct,” Jamie interjects lightly.

Nadia lets go of Allura and, with a little wrist flick, points to herself with both middle fingers. “Adrenaline junkie.”

“At least you acknowledge it.”

Keith mutters something that’s probably deeply uncharitable about both of them. “Is there a strategic reason you were wandering the Atlas on your own?”

“Or did you slip your handler again?” James asks. Nadia shrugs at him, neither confirming nor denying. “Vero’s gonna stick a leash on you at this rate.”

“If I’m lucky,” Nadia returns and waggles her eyebrows at him in a salacious manner. James rolls his eyes at her, but he’s got his little smirk on. The one that makes him look like the scoundrel he absolutely isn’t. 

“And you give _me_ shit for being unprofessional,” Keith says to James. It’s hard to tell if he’s amused or annoyed. His expression is a complicated, constipated mess of emotions that Nadia’s pretty sure he’s not even remotely processing. “Is this how you run all your missions?”

“Yes.” “No.”

Jamie glares at her and she gives him a sunny smile.

“Banter blows off steam that would otherwise lead to self-doubt and second-guessing,” Nadia parrots. James scowls harder as Keith’s eyebrows try to climb towards his hairline. 

“Seriously?” he says to James.

James gestures broadly at Nadia, managing to encompass the entirety of her. “In what way do you think I have any sort of control over this?”

“I’m a ‘this’,” Nadia chirps. “ _Nice._ ”

Jamie gives her a look that is two parts fond and one part I-am-thinking-about-smothering-you-with-a-pillow. He sighs. “The only reason I have a slightly higher rank than the rest of my mess of a squadron is because I actually fill out paperwork.”

“Jamie likes paperwork,” Nadia tells Keith.

“I’ve noticed,” Keith says drily. “It’s like a compulsion for him.”

“I’m right here, you assholes.”

“Useful though!” Nadia chirps, ignoring Jamie completely as he scowls and Allura starts to giggle softly. “No one expects death by paperwork.”

Keith shifts to lean against the big double doors behind him, expression all faux-thoughtful. “Is that a reference? I feel like that’s a reference.”

“I am going to strangle you both.”

“Oh, don’t,” Allura chimes in, barely understandable through her giggles and something unfurls in Nadia’s chest like a sugar high, “it’s so hard to find good paladins.”

James makes a face. “Are we sure he’s a good paladin?”

Keith’s face does something complicated that Nadia doesn’t understand, and James’ gaze goes sharp like he’s just found a new piece to his favorite puzzle.

“ _Yes_.”

Allura smiles beatifically when they all regard her with varying expressions of surprise at her emphatic tone. Keith blinks, goes shy, studies his shoes and the floor with way more intensity than they probably deserve. James has on his problem-solving face, which Nadia thinks will go poorly for everyone if he starts poking at Keith to figure out where the landmines lay. Time, Nadia thinks, to get the three of them separated before they implode under the weight of all the expectations lain on them and their own stunted coping mechanisms.

“Anyway,” Nadia says decisively, making three sets of eyes in differing shades of pretty blue snap to her. “I did come down here on orders, not just because I was bored as fuck sitting in a hospital bed when nothing was wrong with me—”

“You had a building dropped on you,” Keith interjects, a scowl pulling his eyebrows down low and twisting his mouth into a sulky frown. “It took us nearly a solid hour to dig you out even after James’ stunt with the sunspear.”

“Which was your idea,” James retorts, offended. 

“Shut up.”

“I will _not_ \--”

“Have they been like this entire time?” Nadia asks Allura quietly while the boys descend into another round of incomprehensible bickering that seems to revolve entirely around who has worse strategic sense.

Allura sighs. 

Nadia claps her hands once loud enough that it startles both boys and they turn to give her matching offended glares. Which is alarmingly cute. She thinks she maybe shouldn’t share that one. “Back on track,” she says. “And I want everyone to recognize that it’s _me_ bringing us all back to task because that’s just both sad and fucking hilarious when I have, like, three out of the four of our glorious leaders.”

The trio exchange alarmed looks. Nadia resists the urge to sigh. “Please tell me you guys have noticed the fact that what remains of humanity’s leadership has been grooming you all for, like, leading the grand rebellion coalition.” All three of them blink big, unfairly pretty eyes at her. Nadia groans and rubs her face with both hands. She points at Allura. “You are the last princess the only race that stood up to and fought Zarkon’s warmachine to a standstill until he sucker-punched your dad. And now that we’ve got Haggar going full Evangelion—shut up it’s a classic—with some sort of brainwashed Altean colony Lotor’d secreted away to the far corner of the universe to feed his delusions of grandeur, obviously everyone is gonna look to you to lead.” 

Allura’s eyes have gotten so big they seem endless. Nadia needs to take a minute to catch her breath because that was a whole metric shit ton of words and her ribs’d like to remind her that she’s not _quite_ at full capacity yet. She watches slitty-eyed and ready to rant more as Allura twists her slender figure in her sheet, frowning. Nadia senses bullshit of the overachiever variety.

“My judgment is compromised,” Allura says so softly her voice is like the suggestion of sound rather than her normal commanding tone. Keith shifts closer to her, hovers awkwardly, and James resettles his shotgun against his shoulder, his expression tight and angry. “I _trusted_ Lotor when he said, I let him—”

“You were manipulated by a guy who had a couple thousand years to learn how to be a consummate manipulator and you are blaming yourself for that?” Nadia asks incredulously. “You and Axca need to talk because I think it’ll be enlightening. He killed one of his own generals right in front of them and still managed to sweet talk them into supporting him until he went full, you know, ‘my race is a race of monsters, but I can’t be a monster if I kill all the monsters’ crazy.” Nadia points at Keith, who blinks at her. “Don’t do that by the way. It’s not a cute look and I absolutely will pin you to floor and give you noogies until you stop.”

Keith gives her a very bland look. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”

“Good. And you, by the way, are absolutely being trained to take over the Blade of Mamora, no don’t squirm all awkward and cute at me, you know you are.”

“I just help with training sometimes,” Keith protests. 

“You know what the Blade recruits call you?”

“Why are you hanging around the Blade recruits?” James wants to know. “Am I not foisting enough work off onto you?”

“The baby Blades are hilarious and educational,” Nadia informs him. “Think of it as inter-agency relationship building.”

“Last time you engaged in inter-agency relationship building the Balmeran representative returned you by the scruff of your neck and politely, but very firmly, requested that any visits from Garrison personnel be cleared with the Balmeran council first.”

“Yeah, they got kinda huffy when I showed their kiddos how to play the Carol of the Bells on the crystals.”

“That’s because you taught them to do the metal version. How, I don’t fucking know, but that was an entire stack of paperwork and Iverson getting into my face about discipline.”

“It is adorable how they think you have any sort of control over us.”

“This,” James says to Allura, point at Nadia. “This is why I drink.” 

Nadia beams. “He’s a cute drunk.”

James groans, all pained and stuff, but she can see the grin hiding on the edge of his expression. 

“What to do the Blade recruits call me?” Keith interrupts. He looks all adorably suspicious, like he wants to know even though he’s pretty certain he’s not gonna like what he hears.

“They call you their Smol, Vicious Junior Leader,” Nadia tells him with a grin. Keith mouths the entire thing with a constipated look. “Note the ‘smol’ because I’m really pleased at how fast they’re picking up Earth slang. They even _adapt_ it. Shit is fascinating.”

“I haven’t been small since I was—,” Keith starts all angry and huffy, and then shakes his head like he’s clearing cobwebs. “You’re not allowed to talk to Matt. Not. Ever.”

“I am going to point out that we still have assassins on my ship,” Allura says. 

“Shiro’s ship,” Keith returns, looking mutinous.

“We can come to an arrangement,” Allura says graciously as if she weren’t wrapped in a sheet with sex messy hair. “Still, as amusing and enlightening as this conversation has been. I think you need to move and let me into the engine rooms to help Coran.” Allura’s smile goes all devious and vicious, and something goes zipping through Nadia that’s waaaay too interested in that look. “Smol, Vicious Junior Leader.”

“That is a whole ass mouthful to say, isn’t it?” James says thoughtful as Keith looks steadily more horrified.

“It condenses down in Galran,” Nadia informs them cheerfully. “They have a very complex adjectival participle form that _verbs_.”

“Huh,” James says all fascinated and interested because he is, at the little boy core of him, a dork and she loves him. 

“Can we focus, maybe?” Keith says.

“Look,” Nadia says to James, gesturing at Keith. “Leadership potential.”

“Something at least,” James replies while Keith huffs at them.

“You could stop blocking the doors to the engineering chambers,” Allura suggests tartly. “That would get things moving along. Rather than standing out in the hallway like misbehaving children.”

“They sent naughty kids into the hallway in ancient Altea?” Nadia blurts out in surprise, because that is not a point of cultural similarity she was expecting.

“No,” Allura tells her. “But Lance and I have been watching a lot of Ina’s fluffy shoujo anime. For some reason Ina thinks it’s educational for us?”

“Wow. Ina is not subtle,” Nadia says to James as he sighs. “Like. Not even a little bit.”

James scrubs a hand through his hair, which is already sticking up all over place in crazy little spikes. Honestly, scuffed up, post-sex, post-murder is a good look on James. He makes a face at her when she tells him this and Keith looks likes he wants the Atlas to swallow him whole and just jettison him straight out into the void of space.

“We are so far off topic,” Nadia observes faintly. Because, wow, this is impressive even for the normal mid-battle stress dithering.

“I’m not even sure we had the faintest of idea of where the topic might be, much less how to get back to it,” James responds with an expression that says he wants to be upset about all of this but is just stuck somewhere between amused and resigned like a drunk that’s missed their last bus. 

“Assassins,” Keith supplies. “I’m pretty sure the topic is assassins.”

“On my ship,” Allura adds.

“Shiro’s ship.”

“My crystal powers it.”

“Di~irty,” Nadia sings for the way it makes Allura grin at her and Keith blush. 

“How the hell is that dirty?” James demands.

“I don’t know but Keith is blushing,” Nadia says this like it proves something when really it proves nothing at all, but the banter feels good, comfortable, like they weren’t all hiding injuries and pain and confusion. 

“Yes,” Allura says, all slow and drawling, like she’s borrowing Lance’s tendency towards sly innuendo and Ryan’s rolling vowels. “But getting Keith to blush isn’t exactly difficult. I’m not sure that’s a thing you should be aiming towards.”

Keith opens his mouth to defend himself, or protest, or something when something rocks the Atlas hard enough to fling Allura off her feet, makes Jamie swear fierce and vicious, and makes Keith pop claws into the smooth white walls of the Atlas as he grabs both of them and bundles them against the wall, pressing his body between them and whatever new threat has come for them. Nadia’d feel hurt to be left out but she’s got chameleon armor, claws of her own in the form of sonic razors, and the fact that the three of them will always be weird about each other. 

Blasts shake the Atlas, sending tremors across the entire ship and making the floor ripple like a pool with a rock thrown in the middle of it. Allura clutches her head and moans low and pained. Keith and James exchange a complicated look as they huddle her between them. Allura curls into a tight ball, the noise she makes high and feral, like a predator with this paw caught in a trap.

“Communications array!” Nadia barks at James. He blinks at her, slow and stupid with shock and his ridiculous sense of responsibility. He’s got Allura cuddled against his chest and Keith’s wrist wrapped tight in one hand like he’s afraid either of them is going to disappear if he blinks. Nadia hisses at him in frustration. “Take her to the coms array. Now!”

Keith stands to go with them when Nadia grabs his arm. She gets twin looks of disapproval from both the Black Paladin and her squadron leader and maybe a lesser person would be cowed, but not her. “Not you,” she tells him as another distant explosion makes the floor under their feet ripple with aftershocks. “You’re with me.”

James gives her a worried look as he bundles Allura up into his arms. She’s curled into a tight ball, making small animal sounds of pain that hurt small, soft things on the edges of Nadia’s heart that she’d prefer not to think about. “Vero says go to the Green Paladin and see if Allura can brute force the communications array back into functionality.” Nadia bares her teeth at the ways James draws himself up to argue. “ _Colleen_ is with them.”

James immediately deflates as he cuddles Allura closer. “Okay,” he says, soft and worried. “Do you want…?”

James’ voice trails off as he realizes there’s nothing else that he can do. They look at each other in mute contemplation because shit is fucked and they both know it and there’s no good answers.

“Lance,” Allura says softly. They all blink at her. “He blew up the saboteur’s second craft.” Her brow furrows and she presses two fingers against the bridge of her nose. “Ow.”

“How did he—” “Why would that—” “I am going to _wring_ his fucking _neck_.”

Allura snorts a little laugh as they all talk over each other. James and Keith glower at each other. While they do their ridiculous posturing thing at each other, Nadia buries a hand in Allura’s riot of curls and presses hard against the cranial ridge at the base of her skull, dragging her thumb along the line until Allura makes a little hum of relief. 

“Learned that trick from Ina,” Nadia tells her while Allura blinks at her looking a bit dazed. “She gets wicked headaches and that helps sometimes.”

“Using the sunspear to blow out the Alcubierre drive of the secondary craft released a wave of excited fermionic condensates,” Allura says as she tips her head into Nadia’s hand like a cat looking for scritches. “There, please. And that has disrupted Atlas’ main sensory array. A feeling she insisted had to be shared.”

“Are you saying your creepy sentient spaceship is throwing a temper tantrum?” 

Allura scowls at her. “Atlas isn’t creepy.”

“Is Shiro okay?” Keith asks. Nadia meets James’ eyes over Allura’s head and rolls her eyes, because of course that’s Keith’s takeaway. 

“I think so?” Allura says slowly. Her eyes go distant and slightly blank, which is creepy, Nadia would like to note, just like her ship is creepy. “Atlas’ internal array is somewhat, um, fragmented.”

“I’m going to check,” Keith announces. He pauses on the threshold of the engineering rooms and points at James. “Don’t let her in here.”

James gives him a look that Nadia thinks is gonna be the start of an argument but just shrugs a little, bundling Allura up high and tight against his chest when she tries to squirm free and nods. “Noted.”

“I’m right here,” Allura grumbles. 

Nadia bops her nose making her go slightly cross-eyed. “And you’re a cute semi-functional ball of suicidal impulses and poor life choices, yes you are!”

“I am going to strangle you with your hair.”

“Why do people look at me and decide this is the threat that they are going to go with?” Nadia asks James as he hides his face in Allura’s hair and snickers. “It’s very consistent.”

“The fact that I am less of a mess than the rest of you says a lot about all of us and none of it good,” Keith says as he watches them bicker back and forth. “Just. Just stay there and try not to die or spontaneously combust.”

“Why did he look at me for the spontaneously combusting thing?” Nadia demands of James as the doors to the engine rooms slide shut behind Keith with a near silent hiss of displaced air. “I’m not the one with neural link to the creepy sentient ship.”

“Atlas isn’t creepy!”

“It’s because you’re near to vibrating out of your skin with restless energy,” James tells her seriously as Allura makes petulant faces at both of them. “He’s not used to it. I’m sure exposure will remedy that.”

Nadia leans backwards a little, eyeing the door to the engine rooms like it might pop open at any time, before pushing at James lightly. “Okay, now is the time to go!”

“What?” James blinks at her nonplused. Allura raises one eyebrow in silent, imperious command.

“Look,” Nadia whispers despite herself. “The three of you together are gonna be weird and argumentative and difficult about things. If Lance’s little stunt just took out our friendly visitors’ escape route, then they are going to make double time towards the primary armory if they aren’t there already. Vero’s at the secondary one and I’d like to see some dumb motherfucker try to take her on when she’s ensconced herself there like a particularly violent hermit crab with a new shell. The baby geniuses are having a hard establishing a secured communications channel in part because I think the Atlas is being a great big brat about things and dislikes Pidge.”

“Atlas isn’t a brat.”

“I note that you don’t argue that it—wait, er, she? She. She doesn’t like Pidge.”

“She doesn’t hate Pidge.” 

“Not what I said, but we don’t have time for a fun and lighthearted comedy routine,” Nadia not quite snaps. “They need either you or Shiro there and you’re both way more hurt than the Captain.”

This nets her twin dirty glares. She can’t help the eyeroll.

“Please go to Dr. Holt and let her make sure you aren’t actually dying,” Nadia says dryly. “At the very least it’ll resolve one of the Yellow Paladin’s sources of anxiety. He was going on and on about how he was sure you,” Nadia tugs on one of Allura’s curls to make sure she had her complete attention, “were going to drop dead at any moment because you’re way past your bedtime—and by bedtime I mean your limit and he’s not wrong.”

“And you want to resolve the Yellow Paladin’s points of anxiety why again?” James asks with a sly head cock.

“Because he’s not wrong,” Nadia responds tartly. They stare at each other until James breaks off with a sigh.

“Kogane is going to lose his shit,” James says, and they can both hear the defeat in his voice. Nadia almost wants to remind him that she always gets her own way in the end, but she figures it’s probably better to be gracious in victory.

“He will be very displeased,” Allura agrees.

“I can handle him,” Nadia says with more confidence than she really feels. “Besides, I’ve got a place with a whole passel of assholes for him to take his frustrations out on. Now go, shoo, before he comes back, and this devolves into a shouting match we don’t really have the time for.”

“You might have the shouting match anyway,” Allura observes with a thoughtful little frown.

“I can take his twinky little butt, space ninja or no space ninja.”

They give her matching skeptical faces until she flaps her hands at them in the universe gesture of dismissal.

“I can walk,” Allura complains as James bundles her up into a princess carry that is both fitting and looks way too easy for how injured she knows him to be. Show off. He studies Nadia over the top of Allura’s head as she continues to grumble complaints in cute little-girl petulant voice. Sweeps his gaze from the top of her head to her tippy toes. Nadia grins at him.

“You sure?” James has the audacity to look at her all serious and worried with his big dark eyes. It’s unfair that he be this pretty even all messed up, sleep deprived, and stressed out. She’s suddenly reminded of their first year simulation tests when James had _drown_ under the weight of his family’s expectations, freaked out on Kogane, punched a wall and broke two knuckles, and was, in general, a complete asshole until she’d dragged his high-strung, temperamental ass into the middle of the desert to get high and scream at the sky. That burning, manic look is back, but focused. Laser bright and near monstrous in its intensity. She loves his dumb ass.

“Yeah,” she says and then bops his nose. Allura laughs when he snaps his teeth at her. She jerks her thumb at the dark hallway behind her. “Third star on the left and straight on until morning.”

James snorts. “I’m not a Lost Boy.”

“But Allura would make a great Tinker Bell.”

“Not a Wendy?”

“Nah,” Nadia says with a slow shake of her head. “Too vicious at the core at her.”

Allura preens, just a little, and smiles all sharp fanged and dainty. “Thank you for noticing.”

James shakes his head at the both of them. He pauses for a moment as he passes her, lets her press a hand against his cheek, tipping his face into her hand. Allura reaches up to wrap her long, elegant fingers around Nadia’s wrist. She’s so fucking grateful when neither of them comments on how she shakes, just a little, under their touch. She’s not looking forward to sitting alone in the dark while Keith indulges in his complicated courtship with the Captain. But time is a wasting. 

“Get,” she tells them, “shoo.”

The engine room doors are the same weird, pale white silicate stuff the rest that makes up even the furniture of the Atlas. Nadia braces her back against the far wall, slides down, and settles in to wait. Tries not to glare at the door. Tries not to think about how James’ footfalls sound uneven, not exactly limping, but not his normal steady, rolling gait. Tries to ignore how the light flickers unsteadily along the hallway. Fails. Seriously thinks about singing campfire songs to entertain herself but reminds herself that she’s a big brave fighter pilot and absolutely not spooked by creepy sentient spaceships that move when you ask them to. Not even a little bit.

Nadia hates waiting.

She listens with half an ear as James’ footsteps fade into the distance until all she’s left with is her own rabbit quick heartbeat. James would compose reports in his head. Plot out his arguments like flight plans and marshal his supporting documents like auxiliary units. Ryan would mediate. Slide into the easy, contemplative state that guides his shots as sure as the sunrise. Ina would be waiting itself. Poised and still between moments. But Nadia is a creature of the now—quick words, quicker actions—and she _really_ hates waiting.

She props her forearms on her knees and spins one of the sonic razors around her fingers just to listen to the edge sing. Flips it from hand to hand just to hear the sound it makes, like the tiny beating wings of a humming bird. A high whistling almost on the edge of her hearing. Closes her eyes and lets it dance between her hands guided by that sound alone.

“Where did you learn that?”

Nadia jerks, almost stabs herself right through her right palm grabbing the blade, and glares up at Keith, who glares right back at her.

“Warn a girl,” she says lightly even though her heart is going quick, quick, quick. “It’d look bad if I stabbed the darling son of the universe.”

Keith’s eye twitches at that but he doesn’t answer. “Where the fuck did they go?”

“To Dr. Holt.” Nadia’s gratified when Keith steps back, just a little half step, when she bounces up like she’s got springs in for knees. She’s practiced that trick. “The Princess is holding on by the skin of her teeth and Jamie’s only doing so much better. Sent ‘em to your little gremlin of a Green Paladin and Dr. Holt and your big bruiser of a Yellow Paladin. He’s a pretty one.”

The steadily narrowing frown taking over Keith’s face flickers a moment at that, like he doesn’t quite know how to process that information, and Nadia bites back a grin. She loves knocking people off their stride.

“They are going to get themselves killed,” he grinds out, voice low and rumbling. Hands in fists so tight his knuckles have gone white, jaw clenched so hard that she can watch the vein there throb in time with his heartbeat, spine at parade rest straightness. Nadia sighs.

“Atlas will take them straight there. No worries.”

“Allura can barely walk without falling over.”

“James still has his pretty shotgun.”

Keith makes a disgusted noise. “She might have healed him, _again_ , but in a straight fight his reflexes are fucked.”

“Have you seen his reflexes?” Nadia counters. “Even delayed he’s faster than almost anyone else, present space ninja company excluded.”

Keith makes a face like he wants to sneer at her but is holding it in. He closes his eyes and breathes out slowly. “Atlas took a major blow when Lance decided, without consulting anyone else, the fucking asshole, to go play hero and blow up that other space craft—how I don’t fucking know—”

“Oh!” Nadia throws her hand up and waves it around like she’s a cadet at school with an answer to show off. “I do! Skywalk out of the third observation lounge, you know the one with stash of whiskey that Commander Iverson absolutely hasn’t hidden there and the emergency release airlock that can be opened on remote? Dollars to donuts, Lance got Ina to pop the lock for him, Ryan to anchor him, and he took his bayard out and hit their warp reactor from however many ridiculous klicks away because he’s got crazy aim and something to prove.”

It’s _fascinating_ the way Keith’s nostrils flare. 

“I should just let James strangle him,” Keith says in this faint, wondering tone. “I really should.”

“Oooh,” Nadia says with a grimace. “Don’t do that. That’d really piss off the Princess and she’s got some impressive anger issues.”

There’s a moment where she’s not sure if Keith is going to strangle her or breakdown into hysterical laughter. He does another of those long, controlled breathing exercises. In on a four count, out on a four count. When he opens up his eyes, so dark a blue they’re almost purple, her breath catches at the look on them. 

“They are going to get themselves killed.”

Nadia cocks her head. “Why do you care?”

Keith blinks at her—slow and stunned, like the question has been posed in a language he doesn’t know.

“I know why I care,” she continues like he didn’t stutter to a stop. “But why do you care? Let’s be real. Jamie dead would be politically useful to you. No more stumbling blocks. No more _challenges_.”

Keith stares at her. Eyes all big and round and pretty. Nadia smiles at him, innocence and venom.

“No one in. Your. Way,” she whispers as she spider walks her fingers up his chest. She curls herself into his chest all sweet and soft to his hard planes, and subtly palms a knife before she whispers: “No one to _argue_.”

There’s another of those breathy exhales as Keith curls a careful hand around Nadia’s wrist like he thinks she might snap and gut him. Which. Fair. She might. Protective, suspicious fury simmers in her veins like a poison.

“That’s an impressive amount of paranoia,” Keith says with a calmness she knows he doesn’t feel. His heartbeat is humming bird quick under her hand. “Even by the normal standards of your outfit.”

“Our command did just try to kill us with thermite explosives, and when that didn’t work sent two space ships with teched up murderers for hire into space after us,” Nadia says, matching his dry tone. “I think that’s worth a little bit of paranoia.”

He watches her with a little head tilt. Eyes narrowed into thoughtful slits like a predator watching something small and clever. Nadia wants to give him a sharp toothed smile, all threat and intimidation, but she’s pretty sure it wouldn’t work. Besides. His fangs are sharper.

“Why don’t you care more?” He asks, voice dropping into a rumbling croon. “You know they have stupid suicidal tendencies, the both of them, and you just sent them away on their _own_.”

Nadia rolls her eyes at him. “We _all_ have suicidal tendencies, hotshot.” She waves a hand between them. “It’s part of the whole fighter pilot-cum-rebel-cum-guerrilla fighter _thing_. Dashing, daring, highly unlikely to live to see our next birthdays.”

Keith blinks at her, a slow sweep of pretty dark lashes against pale, pale skin and then sighs. “I really should be more surprised at that answer than I am,” he mutters to himself. He rakes a hand through his hair as he studies her like he’s never quite seen her before. “All of you are going to get yourselves killed,” he says bluntly. “Probably starting with him.”

Something goes off inside Nadia’s head like a homemade explosive. A sputtering little _ting_ like a lock breaking to pieces under steady pressure. She balls her fist in his shirt and shoves him back into the wall hard enough to drive the breath from him in a great _whoosh_ of air. Gets right into his face. Snarl baring her teeth just like she’d been trying not to do. “The day they come for James Griffin,” she hisses at him, glaring into his wide, startled eyes, “is the day they step over my spiteful, twisted corpse.” Nadia twists her fists in his shirt until the fabric threatens to tear. “I will never let him die.” She shakes Keith. “Do you hear me? _Never_.”

They stare at each other a little longer as the flush of terrified fury drains out of her as suddenly as it had swept through her. PTSD induced temper tantrums. Yay. She tries to pet smooth the wrinkles she’s put in his shirt rather than look at him in the eyes. She doesn’t want to look at the confusion. Or, worse, pity. “You either,” she says quietly. “I’ve lost enough people and the universe can get fucked if it thinks it can have any more.”

She pets at his shirt a little longer before giving up on the wrinkles. “Sorry I messed up your shirt.”

The laugh that rasps out of him is a surprised, broken little thing. She blinks up at Keith and the complicated face he makes at her. “I think I’ll survive,” he says. He looks down the hallway like he can somehow see Jamie and his pretty, feral princess in the darkness even though they are long, long gone before sighing again. “Which way to the main armory?”

* * *

Alfor’s Left Hand: Stop shouting at Number One about his coping mechanisms while he is in the engineering room, please. There’s delicate equipment in here.

Slav (reality 324): never. he won’t break anything anyway. that conscientious streak of his will make sure of that.

Holt 1: Honestly, it might do the boy some good if he broke something. The way he keeps every negative emotion he’s ever felt bottled up inside like a festering Molotov cocktail of issues isn’t doing him any favors. 

Slav (reality 324): ^^^

Slav (reality 324): he doesn’t have to read my messages. he has complete control over that.

Alfor’s Left Hand: You know his curiosity gets the better of him when you send him _twenty-seven messages_ inside two minutes. 

Slav (reality 324): one per year that he has been alive.

Slav (reality 324): tell him to stop hovering over his palemate and send Holt 3 to the bridge. he's being a great big overprotective ninny and he knows it.

Alfor’s Left Hand: But shouting at the poor boy is not going to get him to stop being protective over Matthew for as long as Matthew is exhibiting signs of distress.

Slav (reality 324): yes, it will. 

Slav (reality 324): he doesn’t trust you lot because you tell him everything will be fine and that he doesn’t need to worry and, for his many many many sins, stupidity is not among them. he knows everything is not fine. he knows that everything is not _going_ to be fine and the more you tell him it will be, the less he trusts it and thus you.

Slav (reality 324): i don’t tell him any such nonsense.

Slav (reality 324): i tell him exactly how things are fucked, how things will continue to be fucked, and how he might make things slightly less fucked than before. this is why eventually he caves and reads my messages.

Slav (reality 324): because i'm right and that’s comforting in its consistent level of fucked-up-ness.

Slav (reality 324): so. tell Holt 3 to get his ass to the bridge. he has a lot of ground to cover and not much time to do it in.

Alfor’s Left Hand: and why should I let go such a handy secondary set of hands?

Slav (reality 324): because all you really need is someone who isn’t stupid and can follow directions. Holt 3 is necessary at the bridge, critical in fact, unless you want paladin with the identity crisis to die, because that’s the option you have on the table right now.

Alfor’s Left Hand: you mean Number 3?

Slav (reality 324): you think i pay any attention to your esoteric ordering systems? that's hilarious.

Alfor’s Left Hand: says the Byfor who organizes on apparent levels of authority.

Holt 1: oh! Is that why I’m Holt ‘1’? That’s flattering. But seriously. Send my son along to the bridge, Coran, his talents are needed. Give him my love and tell him to stop being dramatic.

Alfor’s Left Hand: I see no reasons to divide the palemates when they are both exhibiting signs of distress and I require Number One. 

Slav (reality 324): do you think i’m playing a fun and dapper role-playing game for the amusement of all? trust me, i am not. send Holt 3 to the bridge, keep shirogane for when the Princess brute-forces the communications relay because he’ll need to reinforce the substrata. he'll also need to redirect the Princess’ knight’s impulses towards expressing his devotion through acts of suicidal self-sacrifice.

Holt 1: by ‘knight’ do you mean James or do you mean Lance?

Slav (reality 324): yes.

* * *

Nadia trots along after Keith as he stalks Atlas’ hallways—an angry, pale wraith in sex-rumpled clothes with something to prove. The universe’s favored son and yet still feeling like he’s somehow the butt of a cosmic joke that hasn’t quite reached its punchline. It’s a good thing, she thinks to herself, that he’s cute because the amount of angst he seems to generate frequently hits ridiculous proportions.

Keith makes a flatly disbelieving face when she tells him this. “Seriously?” He asks. “You know James Griffin, and this is what you want to say to me?”

“He’s not angsty,” she says thoughtfully as Keith makes incredulous noises. “He’s more like … put-upon warrior monk?”

“ _Monk_.”

Nadia squints at Keith as he makes a sound like a dying chicken. “Did you defile my warrior-monk squadron leader?”

Keith chokes some more and turns a bright, brilliant red.

“You did,” Nadia sighs. She thinks about it as Keith looks like he’s trying to will himself to die on command. “Honestly,” she says as thoughtfully as she can. Keith eyes her with distrust. “He probably needs it, let’s be real.” She pats his arm like a dowager aunt bestowing her blessings. “Defile away.”

Keith opens his mouth, looks at her for a long moment, and then closes it with a groan. He rakes a hand through his hair. Nadia waits for him to process. It’s a little like waiting for a very old computer to run a very new game. She thinks there might be smoke.

When he doesn’t say anything, just stares at her like he can’t believe she just uttered those words to him with her mouth in this year of our lord, Nadia pats his arm gently again. “Good job on breaking that vow of celibacy he had going by using your sexy space ninja wiles?”

Keith mouths the words like he’s never heard them before. 

The expressions he makes are _fascinating_. Something crossed with a fish out of water and a man watching his own death via abject and complete mortification. So cute and so confused. She’s probably a very bad person because she can’t resist messing with him as he stares at her like she just started spouting Galran. Actually. He might understand Galran.

“Do you speak Galra?” She asks. He blinks at her. Nadia taps her chin as she thinks. “Well, really, do you _read_ it? Because there’s some fanfiction written in Galran that I think is about, well, us. I mean, not you and me specifically, but, like, the paladins and my squad and the Captain and that rebel friend of yours? Yeah.”

“I, uh,” Keith stutters like the ground has undergone a tectonic shift right under his feet. “Yeah. I read Galran?”

Nadia claps her hands together and beams at him. “Great! Translate for me?”

Keith stares at her for a little longer like she’s out of focus and if he stares at her a little harder, she’ll resolve into something he understands. She beams at him. Keith shakes his head. “Are you trying to be incomprehensible?”

“Nope,” Nadia says with a little pop on the ‘p.’ Keith watches her like he doesn’t quite know what he expected, but this conversation path was not it. “That’s just me.” She makes a little hand gesture, like something small and zippy changing flight paths. “Adrenaline makes it a little worse than usual, but my brain jumps around a lot.”

Keith nods slowly. She can watch how he files the information away carefully. She wonders just how many facts and tidbits about people he keeps tucked away—pieces of puzzles he doesn’t know how to put together but knows, somehow, are important. The hallways are still and quiet and full of strange shadows, but less deeply creepy with their resident space ninja keeping pace beside her. Nadia can almost hear him trying to put together all the questions he wants to ask but doesn’t have the words for.

“So, you wait until my warrior-monk squadron leader was half-killed to jump him?” She asks when she starts wondering if she really should check him for smoke leaking from his ears. 

Keith chokes. 

“Waiting until his defenses were lowered?” She continues thoughtfully. She cocks her head to the side while he sputters like she’s thinking deeply. (She isn’t.) “Other people have tried that, you know. There was this one girl, I forget her name, _smoking_ hot redhead, who, like, snuck into the med wards when Jamie’d taken a bad shot protecting Ina. I think she figured he could use some, um, ‘physical comfort’ or maybe just that with enough painkillers to take down a horse in his system he’d actually say yes for once. He rattled off the entire section of regs about fraternization and conduct unbecoming an officer and she never looked at him again.”

Keith stares at her like he has no idea how he is supposed process this information.

“She was _really_ hot,” Nadia tells him seriously. “But after that she wouldn’t come near any of us. I was so annoyed with him.”

Keith sputters a little and then starts to laugh—a small, rasping little thing.

“I mean,” Nadia says, getting into the swing of complaining about her beloved squadron leader and his epic levels of nonsense. “He might have taken some sort of warrior vow of celibacy but _I_ haven’t.”

Keith continues to laugh. She pokes him in the side, and he curls away from her.

“It’s not funny,” she complains even as she fights not to grin. “People started assuming that just because _he_ was gonna say no to literally everyone all the time, no exceptions, that _all_ off us were gonna say no. And I _like_ sex, thank you!”

Keith puts a hand to the wall and just cracks up. If it’s got a slightly hysterical cast to it, well, Nadia can do him the favor of not mentioning it. 

“Why?” He asks after he gets himself under control.

“Why do I like sex?” Nadia asks incredulously. “Do we really want to go down that road? I don’t think we do.”

“Why did he say no,” Keith clarifies like she didn’t know that was real question. She studies him for a while, trying to ask without asking if he really wants that answer. He looks back at her solemn and resolute the way all good action heroes are. 

Nadia can’t help the sigh. She doesn’t like thinking about those cold, grey years of waiting without much hope. When everything was too much and not enough. She shrugs without look at him. “It started mattering too much,” she says quietly. She pulls the hair tie out of her hair just to give her hands something to do. “Every touch meant something. Everything we said. Everything we didn’t say.” She spreads her hairband between her fingers just to watch the way the elastic stretches. She can feel the way her face twists into an upset, sardonic expression. Too bitter and hurt to really be anything like a smile, but she doesn’t know what else to do with her face. “Somewhere along the way we ended up on pedestals with no way down, you know?"

Keith’s face makes it clear that he doesn’t know. That he doesn’t know anything about anything, but he feels guilty all the same. Which just makes her feel shitty. He’s got nothing to feel guilty about. _Nothing_.

She punches him in the arm. “And now you guys are here to take up the mantle of being the symbol of all that is good and just in the universe and I can get laid again. So, thank you!”

“Ow,” Keith says in the flattest, most neutral tone she’s ever heard while he rubs his arm. It makes her laugh, all raucous and messy. He looks at her for a moment and then goes shy, hiding behind his wild bangs. “I thought you be, uh.” Keith makes a gesture that he clearly thinks explains something. She blinks at him. “Protective?”

Nadia snorts. “Jamie is totally capable of taking care of himself. You hurt him, he’ll hurt you back twice as bad.” She pauses for a moment. “Besides, Ina is the one that’s probably gonna give you the shovel talk. Which is awesome and terrifying.”

Keith frowns at her. “Shovel talk?”

“Seriously?” Nadia asks and Keith raises an eyebrow at her. “I can’t tell if you are fucking with me right now or serious. But you know the talk: ‘if you hurt them, I will kill you with a shovel.’ It’s, like, standard in every rom com.” She squints at him. “Are we in a rom com? If we are, I want a refund.”

Keith gets a contemplative expression. “Why a shovel?”

“Efficiency,” Nadia says brightly while making a little swinging motion. “You have both the weapon and the means to get rid of body all at one go.”

“Huh,” Keith says thoughtfully, like he’s got something more to say, but lets it go. Nadia thinks about pushing him a little bit more for whatever thought is rattling around in his pretty head, but they round a corner and, hey, look! Dumb mercenaries with dumb faces they should probably beat in. 

She pulls her goggles down. Keith pulls his little gloves on with his teeth, making a little scrunched up face as he does. She fires the plasma pistol, both chambers right off, nothing held back. Keith throws his glowy knife, sword, thing. And they’re off to the races.

* * *

Slav (reality 21412): hateful little beast

Correct Black Paladin: You do realize you’re talking about yourself, correct?

Slav (reality 21412): A particular alternate reality version of myself in which I turn into an unbearable, high-strung, controlling little rodent with a noticeable lack of social skills.

Slav (reality 21412): This extended period of silence is insulting.

Correct Black Paladin: There is literally nothing that I could possibly say in response to that statement. Not one damned thing.

* * *

_Slav (reality 324) has requested a direct chat!_

[Y/N?]

Slav (reality 324): well played

Correct Black Paladin: I insult you and now you’re pleasant?

Slav (reality 324): lies and slander. i am always a miserable misanthrope squatting in my hole at the ass end of reality. you apologize or i will be forced to demand satisfaction.

Correct Black Paladin: and funny.

Slav (reality 324): give me a minute. i'll code something to slap you with a white glove.

Correct Black Paladin: how?

Slav (reality 324): everything else may have slowly been eaten by the void, but i do have a functional laboratory with full bank of computers.

Slav (reality 324): if you are asking how the cross-reality chats are possible look to that quantum-entangled communications array your palemate whisked together based upon poorly understood physics, even worse understood Altean alchemy and a fuck ton of desperation. you need to pay better attention when he goes on his coding binges.

Correct Black Paladin: I do drug his coffee.

Slav (reality 324): i know, that’s inspired. i approve.

Correct Black Paladin: is sending Matt to the bridge by himself absolutely necessary?

Slav (reality 324): given the way current reality pathways have shaken out? yes. unfortunately. your matesprite and that tiny mfe adrenaline junkie will need reinforcements and Matthew has a whole host of anger issues to work out.

Correct Black Paladin: was Lance jettisoning himself out of the Atlas to blow up the second boarding ship with nothing but his bayard and salvaged armor your idea?

Slav (reality 324): no. i would have instructed him to the secondary armory and his sister to have Ina reprogram docking hooks into a plasma harpoon. less possibility of releasing a wave of fermionic condensates because he blew out the drive with an Altean version of a sunspear. which: impressive aim, but next time take out the weapons battery and have the same effect of grounding the craft.

Correct Black Paladin: there won’t be a next time.

Slav (reality 324): cute how you think that.

* * *

There’s a tiny little grunt, a sharp crackle, and the man between her thighs crumples like a puppet with its strings cut, neck tidily snapped. Nadia rolls off before the body can hit the floor. Bracing with one hand, she sweeps the legs out from another. Catches his leg as he tries to kick her and, with a sharp twist of her hands, snaps his knee. 

She leaves him where he lays beside her, clutching his knee and shrieking, to fumble with reloading the plasma pistol. Adrenaline makes her fingers shake, curses tumbling from her lips, and she really wishes that she trained as much as the sniper husbands with guns. Drilled it into her body until it was a memory her muscles would remember when she was old, grey, and senile.

Assuming she ever made it to be old, grey and senile.

Nadia gets the pistol reloaded, barks a warning, and then fires both chambers. The pistol coughs a little mechanical sound before spitting out a pretty spark of superheated plasma that straight up melts the fusion rifle some dumb asshole had been trying to bring to bear on Keith as he spins and twirls like the universe’s deadliest ballerina.

If, you know, ballerinas had glowing swords instead of tutus. 

Keith steps backward in his complicated sword dance, stomps down hard, and the high, piteous shrieking goes still. Honestly, she should have slit that one’s throat after breaking his knee, but she’s not quite gotten the hang of fighting with Keith yet. Keeps getting sidetracked watching the graceful way he uses his sword to deflect plasma shots and kinetic fire as if he were in some sort of anime. All lithe viciousness where she’s used to brute force efficiency and it keeps startling her.

He ducks at her whistle and one of her sonic razors goes over his head, right into the soft flesh at the base of the throat of the one he’d been dancing with. He delivers very pretty spinning kick that drives the blade all the way through. The man dies gurgling on his knees. 

They stand in the middle of the armory panting lightly. They stare at each other until Nadia flicks him a little two fingered salute and Keith huffs out a little laugh. Nadia pulls her infrared goggles off and shakes out her hair while Keith does a quick perimeter check. 

“We should have kept some of them alive,” he says as he trots back to her. He doesn’t sound too beat up about it.

Nadia points to her back molars. “Doesn’t work,” she says around her own fingers. “They have little capsule things right, err, here! They bite down, it releases a poison, then they foam at the mouth and die.” She pulls her fingers from her mouth and shrugs at the horrified face he makes. “Yeah. It’s super fucked up. There’s no antidote we know of that can be administered fast enough. Better to just kill them quick and have screaming nightmares about it later.”

“Nadia,” Jamie’s voice echoes strangely through the dark, cavernous space of the main armory. “Keith. Report.”

“Oh! You got the internal comms system back up,” Nadia chirps. “That’s good.”

“Armory is secure,” Keith reports, all detached and professional like he hadn’t been standing there horrified at the depths that humanity would sink to protect abstract concepts like shareholder profits and exclusive production rights. His fingers drum an obscure tempo against his hip as they both stand there staring at the ceiling like dorks.

“Outstanding,” James says, a little distracted. “We’re having a little bit of trouble getting a clear read of the rest of the Atlas. Sensory arrays are still pretty fucked from Lance’s latest stunt. Uh. Princess, would you just, no, sit down before you … fall … over. Like that. Just like I said you would. Don’t bite me.”

Nadia chokes back giggles as Keith gets an expression like he’s been sucking lemons. 

Jamie sighs. It reverberates around the armory in strange whispers, bouncing off the walls in a surreal mimicry of a bat’s echolocation.

“Right,” James says, all long and drawn out, like he’s beyond exhausted. “The bridge is last place that we've had confirmed hostile contact.”

Keith breathes in slow, like he’s counting out the seconds, and then breathes out all in one breath. He looks at her side-long under his messy bangs. Nadia gives him a little shrug.

“We’ll clean it out,” she says to the waiting ceiling. “No problem.”

* * *

Correct Black Paladin: Stop convincing my team to pull suicidal stunts for your amusement.

Slav (reality 324): ‘convince’

Slav (reality 324): the mistake you make is that any one of them requires ‘convincing’

Slav (reality 324): they have to be carefully herded away from the suicidal options, shepherded towards the reality paths that _don’t_ include self-sacrifice and tragic early deaths, coaxed into thinking in terms of longevity and third order consequences.

Slav (reality 324): they learn this shit from watching _you_ , in case you are wondering.

Slav (reality 324): you want them to value themselves? pull on your big boy pants and do some self-reflection and value yourself. they all model themselves off of you more than you think.

Correct Black Paladin: On the list of things that I never would have expected: you playing therapist.

Slav (reality 324): someone has to.

Slav (reality 324): By now the Princess should have brute forced the internal communications relay. You’ll need reinforce the system by linking the architecture she natively developed to both the Crystal and the bridge array.

Correct Black Paladin: How do you know this will work?

Slav (reality 324): Atlas is a blend of human and Altean technologies. basic logic dictates that it would require both you and the Princess to run at maximum optimal capacity. the Princess to develop and direct; you to reinforce and support. 

Slav (reality 324): which does, indeed, mean you are free to pilot the Black Lion as tactics demand, but that’s a thing i will shout at you about later.

Correct Black Paladin: Great. Something to look forward to. Can’t wait.

Slav (reality 324): i certainly will.

* * *

Nadia slides into position next to the little service hatch over the Atlas’ bridge. Keith kneels next to her, cheeks painted in shadow and Atlas’ soft emergency lights. They watch a squad of five make a complete mess of the bridge, wires strewn across the floor like disemboweled guts, electricity sparking fitfully from broken consoles. Keith makes a low rumbling sound of rage. 

He lets her pull him back as an operative eezo-powered tactical armor stomps past underneath them. His breath slow and control and in time with hers. 

She can’t quite make out what the pair of black and silver clad engineers are babbling about, not sure she’d even understand it if she could, but Keith clearly can. His hand tightens on the hilt of his sword until the knuckles go white. She taps the edge of the hatch, points two fingers down and to the side. Keith narrows his eyes at her like he doesn’t quite understand. Or maybe just doesn’t trust her. With two fingers she pries her infrared goggles up enough to give him a sharp look. Taps the edge the hatch with her sonic razor with a near unperceivable _ting_ of metal against metal and then makes a short, sharp slashing motion towards the engineers. He makes a face at her, sweeps a hand over his weird sword, and the entire thing ripples down into a tiny little knife, and then makes a hard stabbing gesture.

Honestly, she doesn’t know what the fuck he thinks he’s going to do with a little shapeshifting knife, but dude seems determined. 

Nadia shrugs.

At her little ‘go ahead’ gesture, Keith leverages himself up over the hatch, eyes narrowed into contemplative slits. They both hold their breath as the silver-grey of an eezo-powered tactical suit stomps back into view. Keith breathes in— _one_ , _two_ , _three_ —steadies himself above the hatch, face distant, breathes out— _four_ , _five_ , _six_ —and drops like a hawk making a dive.

There’s a shout, suddenly loud after the intense nerd whispering of their little engineering saboteurs. Keith’s little knife finds a weak point in the armor, metal squeals in sharp, discordant harmony, as he makes it shift into that weird curving blade again. The scream of metal against metal makes her teeth ache and she wonders what exactly Keith’s fancy sword is made out of when he peels the operative’s armor off him like raven popping an oyster out of its shell. A flick of Keith’s wrist and the man goes down silently, chest opened from end to end. She grins, all teeth and viciousness, as the engineers scramble away from him like startled rabbits.

She drops.

Rides one of the nerds to the ground, the man is strong and wiry, but not ready for hundred and thirty pounds of pissed off fighter pilot to fall from the sky and kick his ass all over the bridge. Her sonic razor hums as she pulls it free from his throat, arterial spray pumping slick blood all over the Atlas’ floors, and the other engineer fumbles to get a clear bead on her with his little kinetic six-shooter. She drops at Keith’s sharp whistle, hands hitting the deck with a wet splat that makes her skin crawl, and the other engineer goes down with a blade buried in his skull. 

They’re good together, she thinks, sharp and mean. And that thought is where everything goes to shit. 

Nadia pushes up from the ground, hands going for the plasma pistol, as the other tac-suit backhands Keith. She snarls when he hits the wall with a bone jarring crunch, her blood running cold when he lays there like a forgotten doll. Her breath goes short and a little panicky when he doesn’t roll back up like he’s got springs for knees and no human limits. The first two shots make the tactical suit spark and hiss as the shielding redirects the plasma, gold and red energy rippling over it like water. Fuckers. She hates it when people have shinier toys than she does.

A sideways dive gets her under the main bridge console as she fumbles to reload. Two more shots with both barrels will short out the shielding, she knows, two more shots and she can take the asshole out before he gets all the way across to where Keith lays still and stunned.

Please god, she hopes he’s just stunned.

Nadia comes up over the edge of the main console, aim perfect, and fires a shot that rocks operative. Snaps his head back hard enough that it’s got to leave his ears ringing and vision dancing with spots. With a hiss of frustration, she ducks back down to reload. One more shot and that pretty silver armor will be nothing but dead weight. 

Something ripples in the corner of her vision. A shimmer like heatwaves in the desert, optical illusion warping the distance, and Nadia’s aiming before her brain quite catches up.

Because a ghost in chameleon armour has Keith by the hair, dragging his head up by the bangs, fist and form barely visible—just a strange distortion against Atlas’ white walls. 

Her aim jumps and stutters as she tries to get a clear idea of where the asshole’s body is. The world spins down into something quiet and terrible as the realization that she’s not gonna make this shot. Not in time to keep the ghost from slitting Keith’s throat. The noise that tears out of her throat is terrible, grating against her ears, a wailing keen that she can’t contain. Keith wraps a hand around what’s got to be the asshole’s wrist and she thinks she can make an educated guess as to where center mass must be.

Cupping the plasma pistol in a classic two-handed grip, picture perfect and somewhere her trainers are so proud, she peers down the sights. Breathes in.

The crackling smell of ozone fills her nostrils like the sixty seconds before a lightning strike. 

The rebel leader with all the auburn hair, Matt Holt, hits the ghost like a period at the end of sentence. Nadia drops her arms in shock, training forgotten, as the pretty rebel spins his staff, all lean muscle and lethal intent. The noise his staff makes as it moves through air is the warning hum before first edge of a storm lands. Nadia winces when he slams it dead-center of the ghost with a heavy smacking sound that echoes through the bridge like a warning. Matt shifts his hands, hitting some sort of trigger, and the entire staff lights up with arc energy. 

Backlit with the eerie glow from his staff in the darken bridge Nadia thinks he looks like an avenging angel—expression blank, eyes hard, weapon glittering like death and starlight in his hands. 

The heavy clunking of the remaining eezo-powered tactical suit making its cumbersome way too them jolts her out her shock. She rolls just in time to avoid blunt edge of a krogan thermal hammer coming down right where her head had been seconds before. She scrambles to get distance, half skittering like a sand crab, half running towards Keith’s slumped form. Matt spins his staff in a wide circle, arc energy spiraling out to make an electro-magnetic shield in front of them as she slides into the range of his protection. 

Matt brings his staff down into a lazy two-handed grip, arc energy rippling around his hands in endless waves. 

When she comes up to kneel, plasma pistol coming up in a steady two-handed grip, he launches himself at the last of the invaders. Nadia half-expects him to yell a catchy phrase, say something pithy and sarcastic, but he moves with a silent, deadly grace. The last shot from her pistol ripples across the operative’s eezo-powered shields—a beautiful wave of golden power that spiderwebs out from her shot as the shield finally overloads and dies—seconds before Matt hits. The blunt end of his staff hits the kinetic shield with a high, whining shriek. For a second it feels like he hangs there, floating free from gravity, as his staff pushes through the last of the tactical suit’s shields. 

And then the shield dies. 

Momentum and not an insignificant amount of rage drives Matt like an arrow shot from a bow. Nadia winces as the operative goes flying, silver suit now so much scrap metal and dead weight, and Matt follows him like a hound of hell.

Keith groans, snapping her attention to him, and brings a tentative hand to his head. “Ow,” he says with the same flat, neutral tone as when she’d hit him. “Fuck.”

Nadia sputters out a little disbelieving laugh. “Next time,” she tells him over the sound of Matt beating the absolute shit out of the asshole in the dead armor, “maybe don’t battle charge the dude in the eezo-powered tactical suit.”

Keith shows her his pretty little knife—and no that absolutely is not innuendo—and quirks a little half smile. “Luxite blade,” he says like that explains fucking anything, “it normally does the job.”

Rather than do something stupid and emotional, like grab his suicidal ass and hug him, Nadia yanks her goggles off and rubs her eyes. “I think we need to work on your basic math skills.”

“Enh,” Keith says with that little shrug that she’s beginning to think is his signature move when he’s trying to be badass, “it worked.”

“Only because we had the badass of the rebels here to bail us out.”

Keith blinks at her, confused, and she shifts so he can get a perfect view of Matt igniting the arc energy of his staff as he brings it down on the prone form of the last of Udina’s thugs, painting the entire bridge in eerie white-blue light.

“Oh,” Keith says faintly. “Matt’s here.”

“Yeah,” Nadia says as Matt turns to stalk towards them, all the long lines of him writ in murder and rage. “I am going to climb that man like a tree.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all have no idea how long I have been waiting to write Keith & Nadia. No idea at all.


	16. hurry up and wait pt1

#### TRANSCRIPT OF SNN SPECIAL REPORT WITH HIBIKI KANZAKI

HIBIKI KANZAKI: Good evening, dear listeners, I come to you this evening with a surprise guest. Commander Samuel Holt of the UEMS STFC Arizona Garrison, head of UEMS scientific command and lead designer of the IGF-Atlas. Thank you for joining me, Commander Holt. Or is Dr. Holt? Dr. Commander Holt?

CMDR SAMUEL HOLT: [laughs] I think if we were to follow the formal rules of titling in English you’d give my military rank unless in a purely scientific setting. But I’m really not one for formality. Please call me Sam. If you call me Commander, I half expect a 920A accountant from PARC with a new stack of forms for me to sign. Or, worse, a report of all the things the soldiers under my command have destroyed.

HIBIKI KANZAKI: Speaking of things destroyed…

CMDR SAMUEL HOLT: [quietly] that’s a graceless transition.

HIBIKI KANZAKI: I’m afraid there aren’t any graceful ones, Commander.

CMDR SAMUEL HOLT: Sam.

HIBIKI KANZAKI: Sam. The tachyon reactor that was designed to power the Terminus, was that your design?

CMDR SAMUEL HOLT: [long pause] That’s your question?

HIBIKI KANZAKI: We could discuss the senseless deaths of LT James Griffin and his team, as it does seem to be the topic of the hour, but that would be a waste of your presence. You were not their direct commander, correct?

CMDR SAMUEL HOLT: [coughs slightly] correct. 

HIBIKI KANZAKI: I am … not interested in the personal relationships you may have developed with the MFE-Ares team.

CMDR SAMUEL HOLT: [long pause] [softly] Thank you for your, ah, tact.

HIBIKI KANZAKI: So. [coughs] Uh. Right. The tachyon reactor. [papers rustling] You were the, erm, lead designer? 

CMDR SAMUEL HOLT: [muffled laugh] Ah. As much as I would like to claim credit for that particular engineer feat, no. Slav was the main architect with help from Rebel scientific command.

HIBIKI KANZAKI: Which your eldest child is the commander of, correct?

CMDR SAMUEL HOLT: He’s a member of the Intergalactic Federated Rebellion, yes. [laughs] I don’t think he’s the _commander_ of the scientific wing unless he’s had a field promotion he’s not mentioned. [short pause] Actually. I’m pretty certain that Slav is the entirety of their scientific ‘command’ such as it is.

HIBIKI KANZAKI: They haven’t informed UEMS command of their own command structure?

CMDR SAMUEL HOLT: They are guerrilla force used to fighting a massively overwhelming force with limited resources. They don’t have a structure, much less one of command.

HIBIKI KANZAKI: [short pause] At least not any command structure you would be willing to divulge in a public fashion thereby endangering your own child.

CMDR SAMUEL HOLT: And my home planet, not to put to fine a point on it.

HIBIKI KANZAKI: [small laugh] We are all very grateful. Now back to the tachyon reactor. The destabilization of the mass effect field around the reactor and the resulting destruction has led certain segments of Earth’s industrial sector to call for additional testing into, uh, non-standard energy sources.

CMDR SAMUEL HOLT: Now there’s an interesting question.

HIBIKI KANZAKI: I’ve gotten better at this interview thing if I’m asking questions that I’m not even aware of.

CMDR SAMUEL HOLT: [laughs] Sorry, years of being in the academy catching up to me. But you said ‘non-standard energy sources’ and that rather begs the question of what we mean by ‘non-standard’ doesn’t it? Who sets the standard? What is that standard meant by the phrase? These are the unexamined questions that allow biases to impact our judgement.

HIBIKI KANZAKI: Did you have a doctorate in sociology hidden among your various degrees, Commander Holt? 

CMDR SAMUEL HOLT: Sam.

HIBIKI KANZAKI: [non-committal noise]

CMDR SAMUEL HOLT: And well-trained scientist is careful of their own internal biases. [small pause] Maybe I should get a sociology PhD. At least a Masters degree. The methodological training at the very least would be helpful.

[extended silence]

HIBIKI KANZAKI: … I honestly cannot tell if you are joking. That is one impressive poker face. Dear listeners, I wish you could see it. Please tell me, Commander Holt, that you clean _house_ playing poker.

CMDR SAMUEL HOLT: Sam. And I can neither confirm nor deny those allegations.

HIBIKI KANZAKI: [small laugh] allegations?

CMDR SAMUEL HOLT: playing poker is forbidden by the UEMS code of military conduct.

HIBIKI KANZAKI: Only if you are playing for large sums of transferable currency.

CMDR SAMUEL HOLT: why else would you pla—wait. [extended pause]

[screeching sound of metal across tile]

CMDR SAMUEL HOLT: I’m sorry. [deep breath] I’m sorry. I have to— Someone will contact— We’ll reschedule. 

HIBIKI KANZAKI: Commander Holt?

CMDR SAMUEL HOLT: Something has … come up. It demands my immediate attention. My apologies. I. Ah. [rustling papers] The contact information for UEMS DOI – sergeant Moira – wait, no, you already have that. I—

HIBIKI KANZAKI: Commander Holt. 

[small pause. Quiet background conversation.]

HIBIKI KANZAKI: We’ll reschedule. I know who to contact.

CMDR SAMUEL HOLT: Yes. Of course. Thank you.

* * *

Verity @useofpsychology  
It’s not just me that’s rattled by listening to @explorersam be all shaken while on the air, right? #hibikikanzakiOnAir #ohno #imworried

Replies:  
Dizmit Rha @verylittlegravitas  
@useofpsychology it’s not just you. I didn’t think @explorersam could get rattled #ohnoohno #hibikikanzakiOnAir

Hibiki Kanzaki @OfficialKanzaki  
@explorersam had a family emergency pop up. 

Hibiki Kanzaki @OfficialKanzaki  
But we have rescheduled! I want to reassure all my listeners that @explorersam is fine #crisisaverted

+Replies:  
What ails you @jaundicedoutlook  
‘crisis averted’ there’s a phrase that does not inspire confidence

Verity @useofpsychology  
Crisis?!?!?!

Sam Holt @explorersam  
Listen, children, if you forget your 40th anniversary even the most patient and forgiving of women will be … displeased.

Verity @useofpsychology  
Oh no! :cryinglaughing: :cryinglaughing: :cryinglaughing:

* * *

Bruce Wayne @sky_shark  
Wait.

Bruce Wayne @shark_shark  
@explorerholt isn’t your anniversary 8/20?

* * *

_Allura’s face twists into an expression affronted irritation. She makes a short, chopping gesture with one hand as she not quite shouts at her visitor. Lieutenant James Griffin, highest ranked in his class, leader of the MFE team, and one of the most infuriating human beings Shiro has ever had the misfortune of meeting, rakes a hand through his hair and scowls._

_Shiro can just make out Lance’s slim figure leaning against one wall. He’s insolent, indolent, and laughing._

_Allura opens her mouth to argue with the Lieutenant and then pauses._

_She looks up into the corner of the room, eyes narrowed, and cocks her head to the side slow, with exasperation in every centimeter of her expression._

The image goes staticky like the signal of an old-time television signal loosing strength. Shiro is left with the impression of Allura’s eyes burning a bright and brilliant supernova blue.

Shiro rubs at his temples as the image fades. He’s not sure why he expected his life to somehow be less weird once they got back to Earth, but he had and now he’s … not exactly disappointed, but maybe disconcerted? Left with wistful feeling of nostalgia for a time that never was.

“Is there a German word for the feeling of missing something that never happened but you expected to happen and now you’re nostalgic for a time that didn’t happen?” He asks Matt as he walks into the dark of Atlas’ bridge. He ignores the blood splatters along one wall and the softly sparking electronics where the Blue Suns’ tech team had attempted to commandeer the Atlas. It’s not hard. Almost all of his attention is taken up by an auburn-haired figure laying prone on the floor. Spread-eagle in his combat fatigues with his staff within touching distance, Matt looks like he just dropped right where he’d been standing the second the fighting had ended and now couldn’t generate enough energy to move.

“Hello to you too.”

“No, seriously, German has to have a word. What is it?”

Matt doesn’t move as Shiro carefully picks his way across the bridge. The acrid smell of an electrical fire hangs heavy in the air. A certain possessive rage curls low in Shiro’s belly at the smell. _How dare they_ , his blood seems to hum in furious melody. _How dare they come onto_ his _ship and hurt_ his _people. How dare they_.

Shiro tucks the feeling away. Not helpful right now. Not while Matt is laying on the floor hurting.

Matt grunts, cross, as Shiro settles next to him. 

There’s a long, not exactly _tense_ but definitely uncomfortably fraught silence only broken by the sputtering hiss of unhappy electronics as Matt refuses to answer Shiro’s question. After a while of this (less than five minutes, and Shiro has held out longer against Matt’s temper tantrums) Matt heaves a sigh. It makes his spine arch up off the unforgiving floor of the bridge and his bangs flutter.

“ _Sehnsucht_ ,” Matt grumbles. “Or maybe _saudade_ , though that one is Brazilian Portuguese, and neither are quite right.”

“ _Saudade_ ,” Shiro says. Rolls the word around in his mouth like a cough lozenge. “That’s a good word.”

Matt makes a sound of pure frustrated irritation. “What the fuck do you want, Shirogane?”

“To explore the stars. Expand my vocabulary,” Shiro says. Matt bares his teeth in a feral, furious expression. It’s not the type of face he would’ve made before…. Well. Before. “Figure out why my best friend is brooding in the dark like a teenager who’s been rejected by the chess club captain for the first chair violin player right before prom.”

“Weirdly specific,” Matt says, “but okay.”

“Like you’ve never been rejected.”

“Actually,” Matt says thoughtfully. “No. I haven’t been, really. People like me. I’m _approachable_.”

“You are an _ass_ ,” Shiro says and then shoves at Matt’s shoulder. Matt, being a completely at rest one hundred and eighty some odd pounds of muscle, goes nowhere. This fact sends a little bolt of not exactly interest, but perhaps _notice_ straight through Shiro. 

He tucks that away, too.

“Yes,” Matt agrees easily. “I am.”

“You are also dodging the question,” Shiro points out. “You are _definitely_ brooding.”

“I _was_ brooding,” Matt replies because he’s a pedantic ass when he wants to be. “Right now, I’m the idiot playing a weirdly specific game of twenty questions. About German vocabulary and whether or not I was rejected in high school. Which I wasn’t. I was the _popular_ nerd.”

“You are so full of shit,” Shiro laughs. “And still deflecting the question. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

“I live in hope,” Matt says without looking at him. “You generally have the emotional awareness of a rock and that comparison might be insulting to rocks.” Matt pauses for a moment. “Well. When the situation doesn’t involve Keith. If it involves our resident tortured space ninja you’ve got a near preternatural abilities towards empathetic connection. It’d be creepy if it weren’t so cute.”

Shiro sputters.

“I mean,” Matt continues, talking more to the empty ceiling of the Atlas—and Shiro’s spotted more than one person talking to the ceiling like they expect Atlas to respond—than to Shiro. “It’s cute as fuck the way the two of you are like married on the astral plan or something, but that emotional awareness really doesn’t extend past Keith. Lucky for the rest of us, you continue to be tragically easy to distract.”

Shiro starts to sputter in offense again but gets his reaction under control. He breathes in slow and deep. Glares out at the slow dance of stars beyond Atlas’ bridge display and then sighs. 

“You’re being deliberately aggravating,” Shiro notes in the calmest tone he can muster.

Matt makes a little incomprehensible gesture with both hands. He doesn’t bother to sit up. “Behold my success.”

Shiro prods him with one finger right between his bottom ribs. Matt grumbles at him and swats his hand. Shiro pauses for a moment and then prods him again. Harder. Digs his fingers into that tender space and flexes until Matt squirms away from him with a sound that’s something caught between laughter and aggravation. 

“Come on,” Shiro wheedles. “You may as well spit it out. You’ve never really been able to keep your emotions tucked away. Not from me.”

The noise that rumbles out of Matt is the purest distillation of annoyance that Shiro has ever heard. It transforms Matt’s entire face into something younger, more petulant—something closer to that genius, spoiled boy he’d known those long months of flying out to Kerberos. Shiro doesn’t let himself miss that boy very often—at turns vexing and brilliant—since he was the one to kill him after all.

He takes that thought and tucks it away as well. 

Buries it with his useless guilt.

Keeps it hidden with the entire library of things he refuses to consider too closely.

“Tell me,” he demands, as imperious as any child.

Matt rolls and traps Shiro’s hand under his belly, fast as a snake moving over a sun-warmed rock. The movement drags Shiro down, pulls him into Matt’s orbit like he always is, as if Matt has a particular gravitational center that yanks Shiro down, down, down into Matt’s tempo. He blinks, slow and heavy, as Matt stares at him. Matt’s eyes are a brilliant gold in the low light of the sputtering electrical fires left to burn themselves out on Atlas’ bridge.

“I don’t think I want to,” Matt whispers like they’re cadets after curfew. “I don’t think I should.”

By all rights his hand should start to fall asleep, pinned as it is under the lean weight of Matt’s body, but it doesn’t. By all rights he should feel trapped, pinned in place by the heat of Matt’s body and his burning gaze, but he doesn’t. Shiro quirks a half smile, an expression that only ever seems to show up for Matt.

“When has that ever stopped you?”

Matt pillows his head on his arms. Looks more comfortable than he has any business being, laying on the steel and aluminosilicate floor of the bridge, lit with banking fire, and still shaking with left over adrenaline. But he does. Looks like he’s lounging lazy and sleep-hazy in a tousled bed. And there is a thought Shiro backs away from with caution. It’s a thought he doesn’t have any right to. Didn’t have right to it Before. Doesn’t have a right to it now.

“They kidnapped my mom,” Matt says, low and soft. There’s a wealth of seething fury in those words. 

“They did,” Shiro agrees. he thinks that he should have more of an answer for that, but Matt’s got a look in his eyes that suggests that he might just up and rip out Shiro’s throat if Shiro tries for calming. “Took her for her security codes and as leverage.” He apes at looking contemplative. “Didn’t work out so well for them, did it? Never really does, kidnapping Holts.”

Matt splutters. There’s no other definition for that noise and the look of offense stamped across his face. 

Shiro continues as if he can’t hear Matt’s incoherent noises of offense. “Generally, results in explosions. Big ones.”

Matt splutters some more until the noises resolve into something like laughter. He hides his face in his folded arms and sighs. Shiro flexes his fingers where his arm is still pinned under Matt’s body, inadvertently tickling him. Matt grunts but doesn’t move. “Is that your idea of reassurance?” He asks. “Because it really isn’t up to your normal standards.”

“Do you want a reassuring speech?” Shiro asks. “Lance seems to think I have them numbered and memorized.”

“You _do_ have the numbered and memorized.”

Shiro flexes his fingers, harder and more deliberate, and something like a laugh burbles out of Matt. “Don’t be rude. It sounds bad when you put it that way.”

“Speaking of your team,” Matt says rather than reply to any of that. Shiro would be offended but it’s become something of an old joke between them at this point. “Shouldn’t you be with them?”

Shiro waggles the fingers of his Altean hand towards his temples. “I can see where they are as long as they are on the Atlas.”

Matt raises his head to shoot Shiro a narrow-eyed look. “Do I need to give you the lecture about creeping on your teammates via the security feeds? I will, you know.”

“Is it numbered?” Shiro asks with a grin for Matt’s expressive eyeroll. “Memorized?”

“Given the number of times I’ve given Pidge the ‘don’t invade your teammates’ privacy just because you’re too awkward to talk to them’ talk? Yes. It is.”

Shiro can’t help it. He starts laughing. Matt scowls at him. Thumps him on his chest with one loosely balled fist. It doesn’t hurt, but there’s a faint echo of force. A reminder, all unintentional, that it _could_. That Matt _could_ make it hurt, if he wanted. That little frisson of interest runs through him again before he can stop it. 

“And you were giving me shit.” Shiro says instead of all the things he could say.

Matt looks at him like he can read all those thoughts no matter how well Shiro tries to hide them. He smiles. It’s a little crooked. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “I do.”

* * *

Bruce Wayne @sky_shark  
I don’t mean to be a little bitch about this, but why is @explorersam the only one to have done an interview post-Terminus-Going-To-Shit? #jsyk #somethingseemsFishy #wherearethereports

+Replies  
Skaffen-Amtiskaw @useofweapons  
You are being a little bitch about this.

Xeny @xenophobe  
You have to admit, dude-person has a point.

Chernadine Zakalwe @lastpatriot  
A point that’s gonna get him disappeared.

Dizmit Rha @verylittlegravitas  
And who, exactly, do you think should be giving interviews?

Dizmit Rha @verylittlegravitas  
The admiral of UEMS?

Bruce Wayne @sky_shark  
@verylittlegravitas that would be a start

* * *

#### Atlas Low-Orbit Launch A Success!

Earlier this week the UEMS SFTC Arizona Garrison, home base of the Paladins of Voltron, conducted a test launch of the IGF-Atlas. Garrison officials stated the launch and subsequent two week low-orbit of the Earth was necessary test of the Atlas emergency readiness systems and ability to function with minimal crew. Under the command of Lt. Commander Takashi Shirogane, veteran commander of the Voltron Paladins and one of the remaining senior officers of the UEMS, the IGF-Atlas launched with little fanfare, including no media coverage. Garrison officials explained the discrepancy between the IGF-Atlas launch and standard Garrison operating procedure as a necessary test of combat readiness.

_[click to read more!]_

235 comments

[ _click to join the conversation!_ ] 

Elethiomel @chairmaker  
Did anyone else notice the emergency launch of two short range convey vessels immediately after the IGF-Atlas launch? Has there been a release about that?

Gyorni Vatueil @penitentwander  
Take it to r/conspiracy, dude

* * *

Where Do We Go From Here?  
wcn.gbc.com/where-do-we-go/page-1  
2 days ago – In a series of interviews with community leaders from around the globe, we look at how small towns and communities are starting to rebuild in the wake of the Galra invasion.

Stock Markets Continue To Be Volatile  
wcn.globalnewsnetwork.com…/stock-market-analysis  
16 hours ago – As more political commentators question the necessity of the re-institution of the global stock exchange—which continues to be volatile in the aftermath of terrorist attacks…

UEMS Military Command Calls Emergency Meeting  
wcn.dailyreview.com…/pop/…/leaked-minutes-reveal…  
4 hours ago – Moments after the IGF-Atlas launched from the Garrison, leaked military documents reveal a secret meeting of UEMS high command has been called. Commentators speculate that…

* * *

“Where’s my brother?” Pidge demands as soon as Coran steps into the infirmary. “Where is Matt?”

She appears unharmed, Coran notes, not a piece of clothing ruffled, but her eyes are suspiciously red and her hands cling to her mother’s with an unusual ferociousness. Coran blinks at her with exaggerated confusion, pretending he cannot possibly process such loud, impolite demands. Colleen sighs. Pidge subsides with ill-grace, grumbling and trembling, but refrains from shouting more demands. 

“The core is stabilized then?” a soft voice asks. Allura’s voice, rasped raw down to its barest threads.

“Stable enough,” he assures her. Allura frowns at him and moves like she’s going to haul herself out of her bed. The entire room seems to rise up to protest.

Allura raises her hands in surrender.

Coran watches, amused, as Allura resettles herself against headboard of her medical bed. Her hair is still a tangled mess, but she’s wrapped in a soft robe and scrubbed clean of the blood that had clung to her hands and face. She looks young and so tired with deep shadows bruising her eyes and a rueful smile tugging on her lips. Years of caring for her, protecting her, tells him to rush to her side to check her over for injuries. 

A small movement distracts Coran for a moment, a tiny thing, but it drags his attention to Lance who leans against one smooth wall of the Atlas with one foot propped up against the wall and too careless to be anything but calculating. Lance tilts his chin, just a little, a tiny sign that Coran should back up and taken in the entire scene.

A scene which, if he is entirely honest (a rare, rare occurrence he will admit), takes him by surprise a little. But only a little. 

Allura sits as the epicenter of one cluster of paladins and pilots, flanked by Lance—who slouches with all the deliberate indolence of a man who has found his reason to kill and is just waiting for the trigger—on one side and on the other: Lieutenant James Griffin, who stands at military parade rest. The Lieutenant looks very much like he’s withstood an intense dressing down. Coran raises an eyebrow at Lance. He gets a sunny, insincere grin in response. The brat. 

The rest of the MFE-Ares team are arrayed around that trio in varying stages of apparent relaxation. 

Ina sitting pretty and pale in a chair next to Allura’s bed. 

Ryan lounging at the foot of Allura’s bed. Coran’s put to mind of a sentinel, dark and deadly, between Coran’s little girl and all comers. 

Nadia sprawls across Keith, half-pinning him to his own medical bed as she pokes at his cheeks and laughs at his petulantly grumbled complaints. Hunk has his hands full of one of the medical scanners that he’s clearly trying to use on Keith around Nadia’s prodding and teasing. Keith’s entire bed is full of little wads of paper. Like someone has been trying, very ineptly, to pass notes that Keith refuses to read. 

As Coran watches Allura wads up another piece of paper and tosses it from her own medical bed. Keith’s nose wrinkles as it bounces harmlessly off his head. 

When Coran arches an eyebrow at her, Allura shrugs. “He’s ignoring me.”

“He’s sulking,” Nadia sings and pokes Keith in the cheeks again. “He’s mad.”

Keith swats at Nadia’s hands. Coran thinks he might be a little pink around the tops of his cheeks. “I’m not sulking.”

The Lieutenant snorts. The flush across Keith’s cheeks climb up his ears. 

“ _Where_ is my _brother_.” Pidge demands, whatever patience she’d been clinging to evaporating as her teammates, old and new, tease each other.

“On the bridge with Number One.” Coran answers mildly. Pidge moves to clamber off her mother’s medical bed—why Collen was in one herself, Coran cannot see—and Coran holds up a hand. “I believe he needs some time to, ah, decompress away from other people. Some people find electrical fires soothing.” He shrugs expressively as Allura giggles. “There’s no accounting for taste.”

“But _Shiro_ is with him,” Pidge snaps. “So it’s fine.”

“Katie.” 

At her mother’s mild rebuke Pidge seems to collapse in on herself, for once looking as small and young as her age would suggest. Coran’s heart would ache for their youngest paladin, except the past several hours has taxed even his capacity for sympathy with their prickly genius. He tosses a little device on Colleen’s bed in front of Pidge. It’s now nothing more than a twisted bit of blackened metal and trailing wires, but its form and function can still be discerned by the clever.

And the Green Paladin is nothing if not very, very clever.

“Hey!” Pidge yelps as she snatches it up. “Where did you get my quintessence battery?”

“Is _that_ what it is supposed to be?” Coran chirps in a tone that has Colleen going very still. Out of the corner of his eye he spots both the young Lieutenant and Keith stiffen as they stare at the device in Pidge’s tiny hands. 

The Lieutenant’s eyes then go to Allura, clearly studying her for any reaction to the hateful little device, but Keith, and this Coran finds _very_ interesting, Keith’s gaze goes to _Lance_.

Lance, who is watching his teammate pick at her little device with a queer little smile and a sharp, considering look his eyes. So. Someone has been telling at least part of the story of what happened at the engineering core. Stories that have their resident sniper on high, overprotective alert. That could be a problem with paladins already fracturing.

“And what’s that supposed to be, Pidgeon?” Lance asks. Coran recognizes that tone. It’s painfully similar to the tone that _he_ takes when he’s playing the jolly fool to collect information and assess situations. He wonders when Lance learned it.

He wonders when Keith learned to recognize it from the way the boy’s face goes tight with worry.

Pidge doesn’t bother to look up. She snorts. “It’s a self-replenishing quintessence battery. Obviously,” she barks, completely engrossed in pulling apart her device. “I’d explain how it functions but it’s not like you’d be able to understand it. I just don’t understand what it’s doing here.”

“Ah,” Coran says brightly. So brightly that even Hunk looks up at him. “I believe I can answer that particular question, Number Five! It was the little toy that our uninvited guests brought with them. They intended to use it to overwrite Atlas’ core.” Pidge’s head snaps up and her hands finally fall still in their endless fiddling. Her mouth pops open in the perfect expression of surprise. Coran gives a disaffected little shrug. “And if they happened to kill Allura by draining all her quintessence with your little toy, well, I’m sure they thought that would be a nice little side benefit.”

Pidge stares at the blackened device. Coran _may_ have destroyed it with a little more force than strictly necessary. Her mouth works for a moment, but no words come out.

“Is that why you dragged me from the engineer rooms?” Allura asks. She’s staring at the Lieutenant with one perfect eyebrow arched. He shrugs, maintaining that perfect parade rest. Lieutenant James Griffin looks as if he can spend all day staring at the far wall of the Atlas medical bay. Allura turns her piercing stare on Keith, who withstands it with much less fortitude and grace.

“You were screaming,” Keith mutters as he loses that particular silent battle of wills. “You collapsed and you were screaming.”

“Well,” Lance drawls. There’s something dangerous to the way he drags out his vowels. “That’s a fun little toy you designed there, Pidgeon. When were you gonna tell us about it?” Lance cocks his head to the side. His smile is a knife-edged, glittering thing. Lance studies his nails for a moment, waiting until Pidge slowly turns to look at him. “Before or after it killed Allura?”

“I didn’t design it to kill Allura,” Pidge snaps. “Don’t be stupid.”

Lance blinks. His smile doesn’t dim one watt. He spreads his hands like he’s showing something off. “And yet, behold the success of your genius. It’s such an exciting little assassination toy! Only a little bit calibration one way or another and you could just,” Lance makes a sound effect Coran doesn’t recognize, “suck up all of a person’s quintessence! Especially if that quintessence was, you know, unique. It’s a tiny, portable komar that can be _calibrated_. Are you proud?” 

Lance’s voice is still full of that happy, cheerful tone as if he were talking about the newest game release, but his eyes have a grave’s chill to them. “I know science is all about the iterative process, but maybe—and I know this is just a _crazy_ idea—don’t go out and improve on the mad science done by insane space witches?”

Pidge’s expression grows darker over the course of Lance’s little explanation. Hunk puts up his hands, moving to put himself between his two friends, but Pidge snarls before he can play peacemaker. “Well,” Pidge says, clearly trying to match Lance’s lazy drawl but her voice shakes with rage. So much easier to be angry, Coran thinks, than ashamed. “Isn’t fortunate that you’re nothing special so you’ll never have to worry about it?”

Coran half expects Lance to snap at that. To meet Pidge’s temper with his own flash-fire rage. But Lance just smiles. Coran has seen corpses drifting in space warmer than that smile. 

“So true,” Lance croons. “But Keith and Shiro and _Hunk_ all have unique quintessence auras. Kinda goes part and parcel with the entire ‘paladin of Voltron’ thing, remember?” Lance blinks at her, an overexaggerated flutter of lashes. “Yours, too, come to think. And here I thought self-preservation was a big motivator for you.” He shrugs, also exaggerated. The performativity of his diffidence is an insult written out in elegant, vicious passiveness. “Well. I’ve been wrong before.”

“That’s not,” Pidge bites out like each syllable pains her, “what I designed it to do.”

“And you are, of course, not responsible in the slightest for how it gets used.” Lance says in a crooning parody of a soothing tone. “Because you have never made a mistake in your life.”

Coran rather wonders if either paladin remembers that they are in a completely packed room. They only seem to have eyes for each other while their audience watches them with varying degrees of horror.

Pidge’s lips curl back in a dainty sneer. “I’ve made mistakes,” she growls. “And unlike you, I actually try to rectify them.”

“Then I wait with breathless anticipation to see how you’ll _rectify_ this one.”

“ _Lance_.” 

“Katie.”

Both paladins freeze as if they’ve been hit by Blue’s freeze ray. Allura pulls Lance down to sit next to her. Presses her forehead against his until his eyes close. Colleen drags her daughter into her arms and holds her there until Pidge goes as limp as a scuffed kitten. 

Allura whispers something quick and low and a little bit desperate, but Lance shakes his head. His eyes are still closed when he pulls away from her. Lance tucks a tangled lock behind Allura’s ear. She huffs at him as he slides from her hands and walks without a sound from the room.

“Well,” Nadia says brightly as the medbay doors slide shut after Lance’s ominously silent retreat from the room. “That was needlessly dramatic.”

Ryan snorts. Hunk sighs. And just like that the vicious spell woven by Pidge and Lance’s barbed exchange is broken.

Coran claps his hands. “Well. That’s not the only device Admiral Udina’s little unwelcome party brought with them. So, we have quite a bit of research ahead of us,” he tells them brightly. He beams at the groans this produces. “It’ll be grand bonding time to work together to figure out these new mysteries!”

Ina makes a little thoughtful sound, the first she’s made during this entire little scene. “I don’t think you use that phrase to mean what most people mean.”

“Which phrase?” Coran asks, deeply curious.

“Any of them.”

* * *

**r/Conspiracy** * posted by u/Chernadine [] 12 days ago

[ **Image** ]

#### WTF Is This Shit?

[image: _a series of time-delayed snapshots of the southern hemisphere sky quadrant. The first few are dim, blurry images of a light saturated night sky. Remarkable only for its complete unremarkability. Over the course of next fifteen images a bright, burning ball of light appears in the middle of the pictures. At its peak, the ball seems to have a corona of light emanating outwards from it. Then it fades as quickly as it appeared._ ]

guys. I don’t mean to be alarming or anything. but. **_what the entire shit_**

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* * *

feelingsaboutrobots reblogged from redlion-bluelion:

homoidiotic posted:

[image: _a blurry snapshot of a crude local paper—clearly done by amateurs, but with love—with a headline that proclaims something about a new supernova spotted in the night sky. The text of the article is a semi-restrained screed denouncing the Earth’s involvement with an intergalactic war it lacks the technological capacity to prosecute._ ]

I can’t tell if my local paper is on to something or being crazy paranoid.

*

y’alltron reblogged:

[gif: _two men, animated, one blonde the other both, looking at the screen and then slowly looking at each other before saying ‘both’ multiple times with increasingly definitiveness._.]

*

gutterfire-international reblogged:

There have definitely been a lot more of these type of fear-mongering panic-attacks in literary form going around these days.

*

feelingsaboutrobots reblogged:

do you wonder why?

345 notes  
Tagged: #mfe-ares team, #fallen defenders, #we’re all scared, #and its easy to be paranoid when you’re scared.

* * *

Quiz: Which Defender Are You?

#### You Got: LTJG Nadia Rizavi

[image: _Nadia Rizavi flexes for the camera. Two elementary school children hang off her arms with grins so wide and bright it’s obvious this interaction is making their entire week. Maybe month. Nadia is trying to look very fierce and serious, but the mischievous look in her eyes gives her away. There’s a quality to her posture that suggests she’s seconds from bursting action or delighted giggles._ ]

You’re twenty pounds of whoop-ass in a five-pound sack. There’s no bet you won’t take, no challenge you won’t accept, no mountain too high. You’re fiercely, unapologetically optimistic and see no reason why everyone else isn’t as excited about each new day as you are. Your friends probably wish you came with an off button.

Did you know you can sign up for a GalaxyFeed Community account and make your own GalaxyFeed posts? Get started here!

* * *

The room is loud, too loud, with the MFE team alternating between teasing James Griffin for something or other and bullying Allura and Keith into staying in their respective medical beds. Even Hunk is part of the uproar as he tries to take a full medical scan while Nadia curls around Keith like a cat. Keith’s not exactly laughing as Nadia avoids Hunk’s attempts to move her, but it’s a near thing. Keith looks younger, happier, pink-cheeked and trying not laugh.

Pidge isn’t sure when these people weaseled their way into her team and she’s not sure she likes it.

She must have made some sound because her mom cuddles her a little more fiercely against her chest. “He’ll forgive you, Katie,” her mom says quietly. “You just need to give him some time.”

Pidge snorts. She would argue that _she_ isn’t the one who needs to be forgiven, but her mother’s arms tighten around her until it feels like her ribs are creaking under the pressure. She lets her mom hold her and pretends like it’s not the only thing holding her together. She stares down at her quintessence battery. Lance’d called it a personal komar with a look on his face that she didn’t recognize. A look she didn’t _want_ to recognize.

She feels sick.

A hand plucks it out of her grip. 

Pidge makes to grab it back, but James Griffin has a fighter pilot’s reflexes. He tosses it up, so the blackened edges catch the light oddly before snatching it out of the air. Something gross and slick squirms in her guts. She wants to take one of Hunk’s big industrial thermal hammers to the battery. She wants to snatch back that knowledge that put that thing out there like she could yank those twisting equations right out of the ether and stuff them back into her head. Wishes she could snatch them back and eat them like bitter fruit.

She remembers Oppenheimer visiting Hiroshima, seeing the reality of what his uncaring pursuit of physics had wrought: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

James tosses her battery with one hand, cocks his head to the side, and considers her. Behind him Keith has started to throw little bits of paper back at Allura while Nadia laughs like a mad thing. His aim is much better than hers. There’s only one person with aim better than Keith. And he probably wants Pidge dead right now.

“Kalo asmi loka-ksaya-krit pravardho / lokan samartum iha pravattah,” James quotes because of course James would know the original Sanskrit. “More like ‘I have become all time’ than ‘I am Death.’ Oppenheimer mistranslated. Also, little dramatic.”

Pidge wrinkles her nose in frustration before she can stop herself. “Oppenheimer was fluent in Sanskrit,” she retorts, coming to the defense of one of her heroes even though she can feel her mother laughing behind her. “He did an on the spot translation.”

“Kālaḥ means ultimate or eternal time,” James says in an infuriatingly neutral tone. She tries to snatch for the quintessence battery again. He tosses it up in a high arc before catching it. Damn his reach. “Only in very specific grammatical constructions does it mean death. Still melodramatic.”

“I made a portable komar,” Pidge says and even in her own ears, her voice sounds small. Young. This is not how she wants to sound. 

James makes a thoughtful little face as he considers device. Behind him, Nadia and Hunk are trying to wrestle Keith back into his bed while Allura taunts him from her nest of blankets. That gut twisting feeling come back as Pidge watches her make faces at Keith and say things in Galran that are probably both insulting and really silly. Ryan has his face in his hands. Pidge thinks his shoulders are shaking. Ina and Coran seem engaged in a deep conversation, oblivious to the chaos around them. 

“It almost killed Allura.” Now her voice does sound wretched. She hates this. Her mother presses her into a gentle hug, a silent show of support that Pidge isn’t sure she deserves.

“Yeah,” James agrees easily. She frowns at him. Pidge doesn’t have a lot of experience with comforting, reassuring talks, but she’s pretty sure they aren’t supposed to go like this. “It almost did.”

“I didn’t _design_ it to do that,” Pidge snaps, feeling nettled. The sick, roiling feeling climbs up her throat like the worst stomach flu and sits there. A gargoyle lodged in her throat made of guilt and frustration and shame. 

Nadia and Hunk lose the battle to keep Keith pinned to his own medical bed. Allura hits him square in the face with a pillow. Her laughter is an unholy, undignified cackle. Keith tackles Allura. She goes down with a squawk and an explosion of feathers. Pidge looks away. That sick feeling fills her mouth with bile.

“But someone looked at your little toy and saw exactly that,” James says with that same ruthless neutrality that she’s learning to hate. “And now that knowledge is out there.” When Pidge looks up at him, she has no idea what expression her face is making. James just arches and eyebrow at her as he hands her battery back to her. “So, what are you going to do about it?”

Pidge makes a frustrated sound. Her mom soothes a hand through her hair, fingers snagging in the tangles. She wants to protest that she doesn’t need to be cuddled (doesn’t _deserve_ it), but she can’t pull herself away either. She cradles the battery between her palms. It’s such a little thing. Just a one-off idea she’d almost entirely forgotten about until Coran had tossed the prototype, now a nearly unrecognizable hunk of metal, on her bed.

There’s a train of thought that makes her frown. It’s just a _prototype_. Something she’d been playing around with until she’d gotten too busy for side projects. No one should know about it except her and maybe Hunk. The sick feeling gives way to bubbling anger. 

“Go through the logs of my lab,” she says. Her mind is already a blur of plans and probabilities. “And then build a quintessence shield. And then—”

“Talk to Lance.”

Pidge blinks at James. He cocks his head, a tiny challenge. Not one she’s up to meeting.

“I don’t think he wants to talk to me,” she mutters, looking away. 

“Right now, probably not,” James agrees easily. 

Her mom is petting her hair again. Untangling it gently with her fingers. Pidge wishes she’d step in and say something, redirect the conversation from all of Pidge’s hurt places somehow, but Colleen seems utterly content to let James ruthlessly force Pidge to confront all the things she’d rather hide from. 

Pidge waves a hand at the door. “You saw him leave.”

“Yep.” James gives an easy little shrug. And why shouldn’t he? Lance isn’t furious with him. “You did a pretty good job on pissing him off. He actually dropped all his masks. Not sure I’ve ever seen him do that.” 

It’s unfair, unkind, how cheerful James suddenly sounds.

“It I try to talk to him now, he’s just going to yell at me.”

James makes a thoughtful sound. “Enh. Probably not yell. He’s not the type to yell when he’s well and truly pissed. Verbal evisceration and public humiliation are his preferred expressions of fury. Or, you know, a bullet from several hundred meters away.”

It makes something twist in the space behind her ribs to hear James’ easy assessment. It’s not _fair_ that James suddenly knows Lance better than she does.

“I’m not scared of Lance making some snotty comments,” she says with a dismissive conviction she absolutely does not feel.

Her mom jostles her. “Great,” her mom says in a pleasant tone that brooks no argument, “then you aren’t afraid to talk to him.”

Allura’s medical bed has become a tangled mess of blankets, pillows, and feathers. Ryan has abandoned her bed to join the conversation with Ina and Coran. Allura has Keith pinned between her thighs, her face alight with the pleasure of victory. He’s trying to ward her off with one hand as she wallops him with a pillow, the other searching for an unexploded pillow. Pidge looks away. A hot, bitter feeling fills her.

“Yeah,” she says. “Not at all.”

* * *

Group Chat: hoe don’t do it

LivewareProblem: Shiro, you okay?

OneHandLuke: Yeah. You?

LivewareProblem: Much to my shock: yes. Pidge managed to piss off Lance to the point that he stomped off to go brood. So give him space.

OneHandLuke: Are you sure I shouldn’t talk to him? I know I haven’t been around much, but you guys are still my team.

LivewareProblem: Aw. You can’t see me right now, but I am making a mushy, cooing face at my comms right now. I love you too, Shiro.

ResistanceIsButyl: [image: _Shiro sits in a sloppy cross-legged seat staring intently at the pop-up display of his wrist communicator. He’s covering his face with one hand, a deep blush climbing up his cheeks._ ]

ResistanceIsButyl: Good job breaking him, Hunk.

ResistanceIsButyl: I mean that with complete honesty. This shit is so cute I could die of diabetes.

OneHandLuke: Why am I friends with you?

ResistanceIsButyl: My winning personality, magnetic charisma, and Stockholm Syndrome.

ResistanceIsButyl: Anyway, Hunk, darling engineer of my dreams, what did my baby sister do?

LivewareProblem: Designed a personalized, portable komar and then was not appropriately repentant about it when it nearly killed Allura.

OneHandLuke: What now.

ResistanceIsButyl: The quintessence battery you helped her design?

LivewareProblem: Yeah.

ResistanceIsButyl: Maybe consider hiding when Lance figures out you helped. Fake your own death. Become a hermit on a remote moon.

OneHandLuke: I’m sure Lance will understand that it was a mistake.

ResistanceIsButyl: uh.

LivewareProblem: No. No, he really will not.

* * *

Lance hates being this pissed off. 

It rolls through him like a poisonous fog, clouding his thoughts, making his guts churn and screwing with his ability to _think_. He didn’t used to consider himself a calculating, philosophical sort of person—really more of a ‘go with the flow’ kind of dude—but then he started putting in hours behind a sniper’s scope and that seemed to nurture something cold and sharp in those long hours of waiting.

What was the truism? Spend ten thousand hours doing something in order to master it? Well, he’s pretty close to ten thousand hours spent peering down the icy sights of his scopes. May have finally learned all those lessons in patience and strategy his grandfather’d tried to beat into his head.

Lance rolls a chess piece between his fingers just to feel the grain of the wood catch across his fingertips. 

The board is pretty basic. Roughhewn wood, unvarnished, and all the pieces with nicks in them. It’s a little warped from sitting outside in the sun and unforgiving sea air. He likes to think, sometimes, that if he held a piece to his nose and breathed in, he’d smell salt, cheap coffee and old cigar smoke. Abuelo. The only thing of his that Lance’d kept because, if he’s honest (and Lance is very rarely _honest_ ) the old man had been a bit of a bastard. 

Good at chess, though. 

He taps a pawn. Lets the world spins down to the board and the little pieces. Allows himself drift a little bit in abstract strategy. Lets the seething rage fade away into background noise like the sound of ocean waves. Thinks in terms of moves and countermoves. White to d4. Black to d5. White to c4. Black takes c4. Queen’s Gambit Accepted. Hypothetically, a strong opening sequence for White and a trap for the Black player. But. Lance the White bishop, reclaiming the center. Queen’s Gambit to a transpose of the Vienna Game. White’s attempt to bait the Black player into relinquishing the center of the board can as easily turn into a trap for the unwary. 

Or the overconfident.

Vienna Game to the Furmion Variant. 

There’s a nagging feeling eating at the back of his mind. One that’s been growing since he woke up to Allura’s ill-masked worried expression and the white expanse of the Atlas’ ceiling. They are missing something. Too convinced of their own cleverness. Their own deep worldliness as the Defenders of the Universe. Udina had sent two convoy ships full of teched-up murderers for hire on the off chance that they were still alive and something about that just didn’t line up right. Murderers with shiny toys that were _perfectly_ calibrated to take out his team. Toys stolen right out of their own toy chest.

He feels like he’s trying to play chess with two quarters of the board obscured.

Lance resets the board. White to e4. Hypothetically the best way for White to take control of the center of the board from the very beginning.

A pale little hand with bitten off nails moves a Black to e5.

“Come to kick my ass at chess?” Lance asks as breezily as he knows how. He smiles pleasantly and flutters his lashes. Sugar wouldn’t melt in his mouth. On the increasingly long list of people that Lance does not want to talk to, much less play a friendly game of chess with, Katie ‘Pidge’ Holt, resident genius gremlin hacker, takes up the first five slots.

“I didn’t think you played,” Pidge says and somehow it sounds like a question. He watches as she slides into the seat across from him and folds her hands under her chin. Her glasses catch the light strangely.

“Not well,” he demurs with a sweet smile. Lance taps his temple with one finger lightly. “Not smart enough for it, remember?”

Pidge makes disgusted little noise and taps the board with one finger. Imperious. The spoiled, genius child who has never been denied anything. Not really. Not in her entire life. “Move.”

“You could ask nicely,” he says just see if she’ll flounce away in irritation. 

Pidge runs her tongue along the outside of her teeth as she watches him. “Yeah, you wouldn’t believe me if I did. Move.”

Lance sighs inwardly. So much for getting her to decide he’s too much of an idiot to be a challenge and stomping off to be brilliant and socially maladjusted somewhere else. Nf3. Standard response, beginner stuff. He smiles at her as she watches him. Lance leans back in his chair, body language so open and unassuming and utterly insincere. Pidge frowns, just a little.

She moves Nc6. He moves Bc4. With the way the light glints off her glasses he’s not sure if she’s considering him or the board. 

Bc4 is an amateur’s move. Sets up a two knight defense for Black and puts White in the unenviable position of having their entire left side still trapped with a weak center. Bc5 is the better choice and they both know it—but, Lance is pretty sure that Pidge doesn’t know that _he_ knows it. Doesn’t think him capable of having that much complex thought. Which is, admittedly, the way he normally prefers things.

She moves her knight to f6, completing the defense. Lance suppresses a sigh. He’s pretty sure if he manipulates her into a win inside six moves, she’ll know something is up. Pidge is arrogant and oblivious, but she does have a healthy suspicious streak. Best to keep things to middling mid-teens game, he decides. Not too quick, not too slow, and just boring enough she’ll be reassured as to her own intellectual superiority and thus mollified enough to leave him the hell alone so he can get back to thinking.

( _Thinking_ , not brooding. He doesn’t brood. Their fearless action leaders take up all the brooding time available and then some. No more brooding available for anyone else. Brooding is a finite resource and they’ve used it all. There’s a world crisis. Rationing. Emo bands everywhere are dying. Goths crying out in a desert of healthy coping mechanisms and being forced to actually talk about their bullshit. But no brooding. Not for him, not for the pretty goths in the deserts, not for the emos in the band. Only for their fearless action leaders.

This metaphor may have gotten away from him.)

Ng5. 

Let her think that he’s mirroring her moves because he doesn’t know what else to do.

Pidge makes a little humming sound in the back of her throat. She moves a pawn to d5 and cocks her head to the side as she watches him think. It’s a surprisingly interesting game—not because of the actual moves, but the dance he’s got to do exist within her limited expectations without giving anything away. Dumb, but not too dumb because then she’ll realize he threw the game and pitch a fit. Smart, but not too smart and she’ll want to figure out if he’s some chess savant, stupid everywhere else but good enough with a meaningless strategy game.

That is … actually not a bad angle. Might get her out of his face fast so he can actually _think_ without having to dance around her delicate feelings. On the other hand, she might want to keep playing chess games with him if she thinks he’s some kind of savant and he’d rather slit his own throat with a dull butter knife.

It also leaves him in an awkward position as far as the game is concerned. 

The obvious response to ed5 is exd5 because both his bishop and his e4 pawn are under threat. But answering that threat both might demonstrate more familiarity with the game than he intends to show—and potentially leaves him open to Fegatello attack, which is such a stupid maneuver that if Pidge actually took it Lance isn’t sure he’d be able to hold in his derision and then the entire thing would be up—and demonstrate more situational awareness than he generally likes her to think he has. Dammit.

“You’re quiet,” Pidge notes softly. Her expression is impressively, and unusually, blank. 

Shit.

He gives her his best smarmy smile—it’s pretty smarmy—and presses a hand to his chest. “Do you miss my dulcet tones?” Lance says in tone so syrupy its nearly a coo. “If I had known I would have prepared a song to serenade you. Maybe something for how cute and brilliant you are? “Stupid Girls” by the indominable pop queen, Pink, maybe?”

Pidge snorts. “Really?”

Lance flutters his eyelashes and smiles his most innocent smile. “We all know you aren’t like other girls.”

That, Lance realizes belatedly as Pidge glowers at him, might have been laying it on a little thick. Getting a little too obvious with the insults. For all her short-comings and general ineptness with verbal jujitsu, even their resident genius _will_ notice the barbs if they are too close to the skin.

He lets himself slouch down his chair like he’s petulant and trying to hide it. Like he’s bitten off more than he can chew but doesn’t want anyone to know. “I told you I’m not smart enough for chess,” he says in his best whine. The one that makes Keith wince and shy away when he hears it. The one that generally drives Pidge out of a room in under five minutes. It’s a good tone. He’s worked hard to perfect it. “I have to think.”

“I would have thought you can babble at high speed and think at the same time,” Pidge says in that same mild tone. 

Lance crosses his arms over his chest and puts on his best pout. “Well,” he snivels. “I can’t.”

Pidge gives him another of those odd, inscrutable blank looks. It’s unsettling. Generally, their hacker gremlin is as easy to read as Keith or a children’s book done in two-hundred- and eighty-point font with triple underline. Her waters are neither still nor particularly deep. She is not, so to speak, a complicated gremlin. Having her suddenly turn into an opaque mirror, reflecting back all of his disseminations and deflections, is a little like having the family dog get up and deliver a passionate defense of monarchal rule. Weird and surreal.

(And, also, if it turns out that Kosmo actually _can_ talk, Lance is gonna sue. He doesn’t know who, but someone.)

“It’s your move, flyboy,” she says. Lance doesn’t know where to place her tone. It’s not nearly vicious or sarcastic enough to be something their genius computer goblin would say. It almost sounds resigned. Though resigned to what, Lance can’t tell. He doesn’t trust it.

“Are you feeling okay?” He asks sweetly. “Did you get hit in the head during Udina’s attempted commandeering of Allura’s ship?”

Pidge gives him such a deeply frustrated look that he thinks she might actually, finally, after much struggle, fuck along off and leave him the hell alone. She taps the board. “Did you forget it’s your turn?’

Oh, good opening. He flutters his lashes at her. “You know I’m not smart enough to keep up with your lightning fast moves. Your ability to read a situation is without parallel among the paladins. What you are doing is abuse! You really should stop abusing those who are simple and delicate. So _mean_ , Pidgeon. If you keep making me think deep thoughts like this, I’m going to get wrinkles and then Allura will _never_ date me.”

Pidge rubs a hand over her face, knocking her glasses askew. “Have you always been like this?”

Lance flutters his eyelashes at her again. It’s overdone and ridiculous, but she never catches anything other than the most obvious brick to the face. A subtle creature their gremlin is not. “You know I would _never_ change for you.”

It makes him stumble, for a moment, when the look she turns on him is honestly hurt. “You _have_ always been like this.” She says, mostly to herself. “How did I miss it?”

That’s another opening but the idea of taking it is exhausting. She’s exhausting. He’s done playing stupid social games. He takes her pawn and waves a hand at the board. “Your move.”

Pidge blinks at him. Whatever she’d been expecting it clearly hadn’t been this. She moves her knight to d5, taking his attacking pawn. The move is so amazingly stupid actually he gaps at her like a new born babe first shown the sunrise.

“What,” she says. “You didn’t honestly think I wouldn’t take any of your pieces, did you?”

Lance rubs at his forehead and moves to d4. Pidge scrubs at her mouth for a moment before moving a thoroughly random piece. He can’t tell if she’s trying for a Morphy variation and just forgetting how it goes, or if she’s decided to throw the game. He moves his queen f3. Pidge blinks. Frowns. Makes another random move. He takes her bishop. She tries to protect her pawn in an odd variant of a King’s Opening and he takes her defending pawn. Pidge blinks like she’d forgotten his bishop even existed. Lance has the aggravating feeling that she might be fucking with him. She takes one of his knights and seems very pleased with herself. 

He takes her rook. 

Lance isn’t sure she realizes what a precarious position she’s in when she blithely moves her bishop deep into his own ranks. He takes her knight. Pidge smirks at him and for a moment he’s worried that he might have fallen for a variation that he doesn’t know. That Pidge in her brilliance has found some new move to upset the entirety of chess history.

And then she fails to castle her king.

Lance stares at her for a long moment and Pidge raises an eyebrow. Lance has the uncomfortable feeling that he’s being played with and it pisses him the fuck off even more than he already is. He takes her other bishop. 

Pidge frowns at the board while Lance tries to remember how to breathe like a normal human being and not an enraged boar. Because fuck this little bitch. First, she designs a little _toy_ to kill Allura and feels not one fucking ounce of remorse over it. Then she decides to play him for a fool at chess. Why fore? Lance isn’t sure, but apparently Pidge and her overweening ego just can’t resist the urge to show off.

He moves his western bishop. “Check.”

Pidge moves a pawn to block.

“Are you fucking with me?” Lance demands. “Decide to try to kill Allura and then piss me the fuck off and then what? What? Piss me off some more with chess? Is that what you are trying to do?” He waves a hand over himself. “Take in your success. I’m pissed.”

Pidge gives him a look that’s two parts indignant and one part baffled. It’s honestly an expression Lance would more expect to see from Keith than the smartest human being to fumble her way into space. 

She moves another pawn. “I’m just playing the game,” she says, and he thinks she sounds defensive. “I haven’t even said anything.”

He takes her other pawn and boxes in her king in the same move. “You’re playing so stupidly it’s insulting. Babes in arms would be insulted by this game. Shackled AIs with crappy open-sourced learning programs would be insulted by this game. _I_ am insulted by this game, and I’m close to un-insult-able. What the fuck, Pidgeon? I know you think that I’m a drooling idiot and there are alien rocks with more complex intelligences than me, but this is just embarrassing. I’m embarrassed for you.”

Pidge stretches out one delicate little hand like she’s going to move a piece and Lance knocks her hand away.

“You’re in checkmate,” he tells her flatly. “What the fuck is your game?”

“I don’t have a _game_ ,” Pidge retorts. “That’s your entire,” Pidge makes an incomprehensible gesture that encompasses all of him. “Your. You know.” Lance blinks as Pidge stutters. The novelty of it flat out blows his mind. “That’s apparently your schtick.”

Lance rakes a hand through his hair and studies her. There’s some sort of con being run, he’s just not sure what it is. “You want to explain why you let me win that one?” He asks. “Because honestly I’m too stupid to see what you gain from it.” Lance runs that through his head again and then swears. “Aw, _fuck_. I fucked up.” Pidge blinks at him and he waves a hand between them. “You didn’t think I was smart enough to figure out you threw the game and it was, like, some sort of peace offering. And now I’ve fucked it up. Fuck.”

And then he had to up and _comment_ on her strategy rather than just playing dumb. Fuck. Fuck, fucking fuckity fuck-fuck. Someone needs to come and take his sneaky spy shit credentials from him. Clearly, he can’t be trusted to play with anything sharper than a bread loaf.

Pidge’s shoulders hunch up. “I didn’t throw the game.”

Lance can’t help the snort that bursts out of him. It’s loud and gross and makes both of them flinch. He chooses to ignore it. “I’m dumb, Pidgeon,” he tells her gently. “But I’m not an actual blithering idiot.”

Pidge glares at him. She sweeps her hand through the pieces, scattering them all over the floor. He thinks he hears one bounce off a bulkhead wall with a soft _ting_ of petrified wood hitting steel. If she’s broken his Abuelo’s set, he’s gonna be annoyed with her. Her eyes are very bright behind her glasses. He thinks she might be breathing hard.

“I didn’t design it to kill Allura!” Pidge says, her voice winging upwards into the tones that only dogs can hear. There’s a high, furious flush across her cheeks. “I never meant for it to do that!”

“Oh,” Lance says softly. “Are you telling me the fact that it could be turned into a very tidy little assassination tool is a bug, not a feature?”

“Don’t be cute,” Pidge snarls. “Stop turning this into a joke.”

“Then here is a joke for you, Pidgeon,” Lance near to whispers. “Hurt her, and I will bury you in a grave no one will ever find.” He thinks his eyes might be fever bright from the way Pidge rears back from him. He smiles sweet and slow. “I’ve been learning loyalty, you see,” he continues in that same kitten fur-soft tone, “from our fearless leaders. And she has mine. Has me. Whole and entire.”

Pidge’s face twists up into an expression he doesn’t know how to interpret on her narrow little face. It’s all offense and tortured hurt. It’s more emotion on her pixie face than he remembers ever seeing. “I would _never_ hurt her,” Pidge grinds out. “That’s not what I meant for it to do.”

Lance props his elbow up on the table and rests his chin in his hand. Pidge flinches back from his smile. “Oh, of course you would never _intend_ to do harm.” There’s a croon to his tone that he recognizes from talking to targets he’s watched through his sights during long mission nights. It’s not a pleasant tone. “ _Mens rea_ is, what, ninety percent of most crimes? If you just _happened_ to release a little bobble into the universe … _well_.”

The look on her face make Lance want to go find her bucket. She’s a perfect cartoon-green. Pidge swallows hard and tries to glare. Instead she just looks like she wants to cry or scream. Maybe both. Watching the surge of emotions flit across her face is almost as painful to watch as he images it is for Pidge to feel.

“I had no idea anyone would look at …. It’s just a prototype. I _never_ meant..!” Pidge stutters. She wraps her arms around her and glares at the barren chessboard. “That’s _not_ what I designed it to do.”

He listens to her stutter on for a few moments longer. The rage runs from him like sand from an hourglass as puzzle pieces slot themselves together. He rubs his face with both hands. “You cannot be this naïve,” he mutters. “It’s bad enough that Keith has the social awareness of a stage three malignant cancer and Hunk’d rather hide in the inside of the guts of a Galra engine than actually communicate with the outside world. But if you’re actually some sort of innocent ingenue inventor we’ve got a whole new host of bullshit problems.”

Pidge makes an affronted sound but doesn’t argue.

The table looks very inviting in that ‘come-beat-your-head-here-until-the-universe-makes-sense’ kind of way. Honestly, he should have seen this one coming. Should have spotted it a million miles away chugging towards them like a freight train made of bad life choices and worse coping mechanisms, but somehow Lance’d convinced himself that Pidge was too damned _smart_ for this sort of bullshit. There’s, like, at least sixty bazillion movies with exactly this plot, Lance is pretty sure. Should have seen it coming like a billboard lit up with every light Broadway could ever produce. But he hadn’t. 

He is, it has been noted, a complete fucking idiot.

Lance gives into the allure of the table with a groan and thumps his head against it a few times. “You are,” he says to the table, “a fucking menace.”

“I don’t think a table can ‘menace’.” Pidge says. He props his chin on the table and gives her a narrow-eyed look. Pidge curls in on herself. “I never thought anyone would look at it and see … that.”

Lance groans. He thumps his forehead against the table a few more times for good measure before sitting up. Pidge’s eyes immediately flick to his forehead. It’s probably all red and developing a goose-egg. Whatever. He stares at her until she squirms.

“Pidgeon,” he says carefully, enunciating each word perfectly. “I realize you probably slept through all your history classes, but if you’d actually paid attention you would’ve noticed the general theme for humanity. Namely, the first thing we do with any new invention is turn around and try to kill each other with it. Often with rousing success.” Lance rubs at his forehead where it’s starting to ache. Maybe beating his head against the table hadn’t been the best plan. Nicely dramatic though. “Just. What were you _thinking?_ ”

“That getting stuck in the void of space sucked monstrous donkey balls and I was not going to do that ever again,” Pidge says immediately. She turns a delicate pink when he just looks at her over his hand as he pinches the bridge of his nose. “Everything went to shit after that,” she offers quietly. “I just wanted to fix it.”

May all the gentle saints and small gods help them. They clearly need it. Lance sighs. “You can't apply engineering solutions to emotional problems and expect them to fix anything, Pidgeon.”

“I can _try_.”

It’s such a _her_ answer that Lance starts to crack up. It’s a sputtering little laugh at first but eventually he’s laughing so hard his ribs ache with it. It’s a little hysterical and a lot raucous, but it feels good. Feels like a release. Lance sighs out a breath once the laughter lets go him. He scrubs both hands through his hair, making a face at the feeling of dried blood and grease. _Eurgh_. He needs a shower, a hot oil treatment, and probably to exfoliate like a motherfucker. 

“All right,” he says with a heavy sigh. He even _sounds_ like his abuelo. Gods help him. “Here’s what we’re gonna do: you are going to give me a list of everything you’ve been working on that the Garrison—and thus Admiral Fuckwit—has access to, and I am going to tell you exactly how they could be turned into weapons because somehow we’ve fallen down the Tropes Tree and you hit every bad science trope known to shitty sci-fi writers on the way down.”

“And you can spot which one could be turned into a weapon?” Pidge asks.

Lance inspects that statement for hidden insults, barely concealed barbs, little jabs, and blinks when he finds none. He sighs at her. “I can tell you without even looking at the list which of your new, shiny toys could be turned into a weapon. Answer: all of them.” Pidge’s eyebrow wings upward towards her hairline. “If a French press and a kitchen full of chemicals can be turned into a contact explosive, trust me, all of your brilliant little gadgets can definitely be turned into a weapon by the creative.”

“Contact explosive?”

“Cornering Ina and then hurting Jamie is a bad idea for everyone. She gets inventive.” Lance re-buries that memory. It had not been one of his better days. “But yeah, I’ve spent a better part of this year dealing with unconventional weaponry. I’ve got a pretty good idea of how to adapt things.”

Pidge pulls a thoughtful face. “Is that what you’ve been up to?”

“You didn’t hack the reports?” Lance asks, honestly surprised. Pidge is not great with that entire ‘respect for privacy’ thing. He’d learned about three months into knowing her to keep anything he wanted secret locked tight inside his head. 

She shakes her head. “James ptp encrypted them with an alert dog ICE.” She gives a tiny, uncomfortable shrug. “I thought Keith would tell us if it was anything important anyway.”

While Lance had been trusting in Pidge’s innate disdain for boundaries and general refusal to keep her hacker-gremlin fingers to herself. Huh.

“You ever think that we maybe have some really impressive communication issues?” He asks.

“ _Yes_.”

* * *

Group Chat: hoe don’t do it

TheRealRizavi: I love this group name.

Vero: You would.

TheRealRizavi: I feel like it speaks to me on a personal level.

nottheblackpaladin(official): because it does

ResistanceIsButyl: Look at baby boy get all _sassy_. I’m so proud.

nottheblackpaladin(official): are you okay?

nottheblackpaladin(official): i mean that as an honest question. not sarcastic

ResistanceIsButyl: I love that you have to clarify. I feel like all my lessons are coming to beautiful fruition. I am so proud. You have no idea.

nottheblackpaladin(official): Matt.

OneHandLuke: [image: _Matt lies flat on his back, one arm up to peer at his wrist communicator. His hair is loose from its braid, forming a wide halo of auburn silk around his head. He’s staring up at his communicator with an amused, fond grin._ ]

OneHandLuke: He’s fine. 

ResistanceIsButyl: BETRAYER

OneHandLuke: revenge is sweet.

TheRealRizavi: omfg. You two are the cutest fucking thing ever.

ResistanceIsButyl: Lies and slander. Also. Who let you in here? We have standards.

OneHandLuke: Clearly not high ones since you’re here.

ResistanceIsButyl: you _dare_  


TheRealRizavi: [image: _Keith blinks up at a camera. His hair is a wild mess across the starched white of a medical bed pillow. The pillow looks a little worse for wear. The edge of the picture shows Allura’s face, slack with sleep, pressed against his shoulder._ ]

TheRealRizavi: Guess.

nottheblackpaladin(official): i regret every life choice that has led me to this place

ResistanceIsButyl: _so_ sassy.

LivewareProblem: Excuse us. I need to stop Keith from maiming Nadia and waking up Allura.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey. been a hot minute. how are you?


	17. hurry up and wait pt2

Nadia lifts her arm, her wrist communicator flashing with incoming messages, high above her head and cackles at Keith’s ineffectual swipes at her. They both go still as statutes when Allura makes a cranky noise in her sleep. Keith lets Nadia brace herself against his chest as they both peer at Allura. There’s a long pause where Keith can feel Nadia vibrate with barely restrained tension, and then Allura goes still again. 

After a long moment, she starts to snore, just a tiny little hitching sound, but definitely a snore.

Nadia presses her hands to her mouth, eyes wide. “That is,” she mock whispers, “the cutest shit.”

Allura face wrinkles up in her sleep, just a tiny crinkle of her nose, and she curls in tighter against Keith’s shoulder. He’s not sure how he’s ended up here, pined between Nadia and Allura with Hunk watching them as if he’s watching a pile of puppies, but he doesn’t think he hates it. 

“You get to deal with her if she wakes up,” he tells Nadia seriously.

Nadia runs her tongue around the outside of her teeth and gives him a positively filthy leer. “Di~irty,” she sings. “Like taking care of the Princess would be any hardship.”

There’s an innuendo going on in there that Keith’s brain flat out refuses to process.

Hunk snorts. “Don’t you think you’re pressing your luck there?” He asks Nadia. She quirks a curious eyebrow. “Lance?”

Nadia stares at them for a long, long moment before an unholy sputtering noise erupts out of her until she’s curled over Keith’s chest laughing. This is … not the reaction Keith had been expecting. He shoots a look at Hunk, hoping that he’ll have a better idea of what’s going on. Only Hunk’s wearing an expression that’s two-thirds baffled and one-third annoyed that he’s baffled. Nadia thumps her fist on Keith’s shoulder opposite to where Allura’s pressed against his side.

“M’whugh?” Allura snorts inelegantly as she jerks awake. They all go still as Allura sits bolt upright. She looks at Hunk, then at Keith, and then at where Nadia’s still snickering into Keith’s chest. Allura sighs. Without a word she fishes out a pillow from her nest of blankets and smacks Nadia with it. This also results in Allura smacking _him_ , which he absolutely does not deserve. 

“Hey!” He protests as Allura raises the pillow again.

“I was sleeping,” she says like this is any sort of justification for beating defenseless fighter pilots with pillows.

“Allura, Allura,” Nadia says as she tries to wrestle the pillow away from the princess trying to beat them both to death with a bit of cloth and synthetic goose down. “Tell them why Lance being jealous is funny?”

Allura lifts the pillow back and clutches it to her chest while she considers this. She eyes Nadia suspiciously over the top of it. “Jealous of what?”

“Me,” Nadia says as she flicks her fingers between herself and Allura, “and you.”

“Oh,” Allura blinks and blush darkens her cheeks charmingly. “I don’t think Lance knows how to be jealous when it comes to _that_. Not really.” She pauses for a moment, clearly thinking something through, which Keith thinks is fair. The Lance that _he_ knows is absolutely capable of being jealous. Jealous and petty and vindictive. “Though I’m not allowed to talk to you about sex anymore,” Allura tells Nadia as the blush climbs up to her ears. It’s fascinating to watch. “Not after. Erm. Well.”

“You told him ‘good game,’ didn’t you?”

“You said it was traditional after sexual activities had been, erm, concluded to the satisfaction, um, of all parties involved!”

“Oh. I love you, Princess. I do. Never change.”

“Oh my god,” Hunk says softly as Allura resumes her solid attempt to murder Nadia with a pillow. “They’ve become _friends_.”

* * *

century-confluence reblogged from heretic-heterodoxy:

heretic-heterodoxy posted:

[image: _LTJG Lance Serrano has an arm slung around LT James Griffin’s shoulders and a brilliant grin lighting up his entire face. He looks elfin, devious, and terribly pleased with himself. James, for his part, looks partway between amused and resigned. They both have glitter smeared across every inch of their bare skin and elaborate make-up that makes their eyes seem endless and their cheekbones sharp as razor blades. Behind them are people on homemade floats, feathers on the wind, and the general air of an amazing party._ ]

Anyone remember when Serrano dragged everyone home for Carnaval in Santiago de Cuba? Because I do.

*

breeliss:

Oh shit. Do I ever remember this. It was the best day of my LIFE. I have pictures because honestly everyone needs to see Nadia Rizavi in a feathered bra and not much else. 

[image: _the picture is blurry, but LTJG Nadia Rizavi is on a float stripped down to glittering underwear and a bra that someone has hot-glued feathers to. Her skin gleams with sweat as she throws handfuls of glitter at the crowd. Her grin is huge and terrible._ ]

[image: _LTJG Ryan Kinkade and Lance Serrano stand on street corner surrounded by a crowd of laughing citizens. Both wear nothing but a pair of neon red hot pants. Giggling locals paint their skin with glitter and shimmering paint. Lance is laughing, his arms flung wide to let a pretty pair of twins drag their fingers across his skin, leaving incomprehensible patterns all over him. Ryan is watching intensely as a solemn eyed girl draws intricate designs up his arms._ ]

[image: _Princess Allura of Altea stands flanked by a pair of older women with stern faces and elaborate headdresses. She’s in a modest dress done in dark colours, a black lace veil covering her face, and all around her partygoers give her wide, respectful birth. She is Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte come from the mainland to visit her island cousins and all bow before her._ ]

[image: _LT James Griffin is stripped to an immodest pair of hot pants, glitter streaked through his hair, and hand prints in shining paint all over his skin. He’s glowering at a chessboard in front of a bombed out shop whose single, broken sign proclaims it the local bodega. A trio of old men with questionable smoking habits laugh at his serious expression._ ]

[image: _LTJG Ina Leifsdottir has a small notebook propped against one knee, her handwriting tiny and cramped across the page, as she listens intently while multi-generational family tells her a story. She’s faintly pink with sun under a wide-brimmed hat._ ]

*

cottondulces:

for a spoiled white dude, James Griffin handled getting his handed him to by the local chess club pretty well.

[image: _LT James Griffin stares at the board, an expression of amused confusion painting his face, and a trio of old men cackle at him. He’s lost the game catastrophically._ ]

*

darkavenue:

may the names of anyone who speaks against Lance Serrano and his beloveds be cursed for a hundred years. He is Cuba’s son and we will always love who he loved.

[Image: _LTJG Lance Serrano stretches so far out over the edge of a float that only LTJG Ryan Kinkade’s hand fisted in the back of his tiny hot shorts keeps from tumbling into the crowd. Serrano reaches for people who press kisses to his skin, their eyes bright with unshed tears. His make-up is streaked with his own tears though his smile is as brilliant as a supernova._ ]

*

heretic-heterodoxy:

these are the best additions to this post that could possible happen. Thank you all. Please ignore me while I cry messily at work.

129 Notes  
Tagged: #MFE-Ares Team, #Lance Serrano, #Carnaval in Santiago de Cuba, #fuck everything, #I will miss them forever, #Santa Muerte guide them

* * *

Group Chat: go ‘round the prickly pear

deadshotLance: you’re such a pretentious bitch

griffinwings: so are you, since you recognized the line

deadshotLance: I have, indeed, played myself

InaGegnHernaðurinu: oh. We have our own group chat now. That’s nice.

griffinwings: ‘our own group chat’? Is there some other group chat we should be aware of?

therealRizavi: team voltron has their own group chat.

therealRizavi: it’s called ‘hoe don’t do it’. I feel like that speaks to me on a spiritual level.

griffinwings: because it does.

therealRizavi: Keith said the same thing!

griffinwings: @deadshotLance, shoot me. Put me out of this misery. Be my mercy angel.

deadshotLance: fuck no. Commit seppuku like a true warrior-monk. Your honor demands it. Your cow demands it. Ask Keith for a spare katana. He’s probably got one shoved under his mattress.

longshotKinkade: Is there a reason we’ve suddenly got a group chat?

deadshotLance: YOU MADE A MATCHING SCREENNAME 

deadshotLance: :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart:

deadshotLance: You are my favorite and I love you

longshotKinkade: I thought Allura was your favorite?

deadshotLance: Allura is the light of my life, queen of my soul, reason for my being. But _you_ are my darling sniper husband. Don’t you read fanfic?

longshotKinkade: No.

therealRizavi: you should. It’s fucking hilarious.

InaGegnHernaðurinu: is there a reason you have created this group chat, James?

therealRizavi: Blackmail material for when Lance inevitably gets drunk and starts mass texting his love and adoration of Ryan?

deadshotLance: Bitch.

deadshotLance: I do that _sober_.

griffinwings: I’ve been talking to Vero. I think I’ve got an idea for flushing out Udina’s sponsors.

InaGegnHernaðurinu: ‘sponsors’?

deadshotLance: Ina-bean’s right. That’s an interesting word choice you’ve got there, Jamie, want share with the rest of the class?

longshotRyan: and you had to set up an unsecure group chat to share this idea? That seems unwise.

griffinwings: please. like I’d ever do anything without encryption. Remember when I made you swap out your communicators? Yeah.

therealRizavi: you ever wonder if we’re maybe a little too paranoid?

griffinwings: No. And besides I wanted some distance from Lance before I sprang this idea, because he’s gonna hate it.

deadshotLance: there’s a statement that fills me with a nameless dread

griffinwings: it involves using Allura as bait.

deadshotLance: okay. yeah. I hate it.

* * *

Matt leaves Shiro to the questionable solace of his father and his father’s displeasure being expressed at high volume via encrypted vid-coms. Shiro catches his eye as Matt slides out of the bridge and gives him a playfully annoyed glower for abandoning Shiro to his father’s ire, which is honestly ninety percent the aftermath of terror masquerading as anger and Matt just doesn’t have the energy to deal with both his father’s emotions and his own. 

Matt blows him a raspberry. 

Shiro laughs even as Matt’s father continues to rant. Somewhere in between being kidnapped by the Galra, becoming the Black Paladin, dying, developing some interesting (and by ‘interesting’ Matt means ‘bloody fucking stupid’) mental block regarding his connection to said semi-sentient mechanical cat, and _then_ forming a neural link with a Human-Altean hybrid Artificial Intelligence with uncharted abilities, some of the starched military perfection has worn off him.

Which is probably for the best, given that LT James Griffin has all the military starch necessary for at least two full command divisions.

Atlas’ halls are full of a waiting sort of silence that reminds Matt uncomfortably of the edge of a storm before it makes landfall. All heavy pressure and stillness. Working on the sort of hindbrain-hunch that he’d learn to cultivate as a guerilla fighter, Matt follows the pressure and silence until he fetches up against an otherwise unobtrusive door done in Atlas’ institutional pale cream. Landlord white, his mother had once called it. Matt eyes the door with distrust for a moment though he’s got not a single reason for it, before palming the lock.

“Is there something that I can do for you, rebel leader Matt Holt?” James asks without looking up. It’s impressive the volume of subtle sarcasm the man can pile into one facetiously used pseudo-title and unwarranted amount of weaponized politeness. James taps something out on a data pad with a frown before flipping through a holo-display of a set of building blueprints.

Matt leans against the door jam and cocks his head. His hair flies all around him, threatening to get in his mouth, and ruins the cool pose he’s going for. Fortunately, James doesn’t notice. Matt’s not sure he’d notice anything short of a nuclear blast singing off the edges of his ridiculous flippy haircut, he’s so buried in whatever report he’s currently writing.

“Doesn’t being the proud owner of one military certificate of death exempt you from paperwork, LT?” Matt wonders aloud—just flinging the question into the waiting ether, absolutely no snide commentary meant _at all_. Honest. James snorts. “Or have you decided to put a whole new spin on the ‘ghost’ part of ghostwriting?”

“You know the Army,” James says without looking around. “If it’s not written down in triplicate it didn’t exist, didn’t happen, and they certainly aren’t gonna pay the combat wages for it.”

Matt sputters for a minute before doubling up with cackles. 

It takes him a second to get himself under control. He’s still sort of wheezing in a half-hitching giggle when he slings himself over James’ shoulders to peer at the report that James is poking at with a general air of a man who has seen the end of everything, and it is all terribly stupid. Matt pokes his cheek. James closes his eyes for a moment and sighs before going right back to tapping fixedly at his report. He’s getting better ignoring distractions in general and Matt in specific. Matt’s not sure if he can take credit for that, or if it’s entirely down to over exposure to one Lance Serrano who seems to think that the MFEs are, each of them, his personal snuggle toys.

“Is this some sort of self-soothing thing?” Matt asks as he watches James plug away at an incomprehensible report. “On most people, I’d say this is the slowest for of self-destructive behavior I’ve ever seen. Death through the atrophy of high brain functions. Emotional self-harm via the monotony of paperwork. The—”

James smacks him upside the head. A quick, efficient little thwack that leaves him stunned with the audacity. James finishes an entire paragraph while Matt hangs off his shoulders, blinking, and unable to quite process what had just happened. 

“You hit me!”

“Ask me nice, and I’ll do it again.”

Matt flutters his lashes. “You sweet talker, you.”

James makes a sputtering little noise that’s stuck between a laugh and a sigh. “Shouldn’t you be annoying Captain Shirogane or Paladin Kogane? Your sister? Something.”

“Can’t I just want to spend time with my favorite military stick in the mud?”

“I’m your favorite? That’s actually strangely flattering. I’m pretty sure I qualify for a section 8 for that statement alone.”

“You’re so cute when you’re all military.” Matt plucks the data pad out James’ hands. James sighs. Honestly, now he’s just starting to sound like a steam engine with a faulty seal. “Are you trying to make plan all on your lonesome? You’d think getting blown up—twice!—would put you off that.”

“Someone in this outfit has got to put to get at least the barest of bones of a plan.” James tries to swipe his data pad back, but Matt just raises it up over their heads and James slinks back into his seat with a peeved expression. “Besides, I’m not making unilateral decisions. I have, in fact, consulted my command.”

“Jamie, I’m not sure how to point this out to you gently, but you have the most explosive set of authority issues of anyone I have ever meet and I know Keith Kogane.”

“Everyone says Keith has problems with authority,” James says in an oddly contemplative tone. “He really doesn’t. He’s got a healthy set of trust issues that he tends like a monk with bonsai garden, but authority …not so much.”

“Chain of command, Jamie.” Matt thinks he needs to block off that particular conversational rabbit hole before James can really commit to it. “Who do you think is your chain of command?”

“Three guesses.” James’ grin is wicked. “If they don’t include a lot of silver-white hair, anger issues, and magic powers of unknown magnitude then they don’t count.”

“Yeah. That’s what I was afraid you were going to say.”

* * *

Quiz: Which Defender Are You?

#### You Got: LTJG Ina Leifsdottir

[image: _LTJF Ina Leifsdottir stands at attention before an interesting array of civilian leaders of the rebellion coalition. Her face is as smooth as placid water. There’s something to her expression that suggests she finds the questions the panel lobs at her to be deeply trivial but is far too polite to say anything._ ]

Your calmness is the thing of legends. You could watch the impending heat death of the universe and murmur only the faintest _huh_ in response. You have the patience of a saint and a gentleness to match. They are only rivaled by the subtleness of your intellect. Which is probably a good thing because all your friends are insane.

Did you know you can sign up for a GalaxyFeed Community account and make your own GalaxyFeed posts? Get started here!

* * *

Group Chat: go ‘round the prickly pear

AlluraofAltea: Is this the funeral plan or the gala plan?

griffinwings: gala plan

griffinwings: you vetoed the funeral plan, remember? Called it distasteful.

deadshotLance: lemme get this straight. You two have _more than one_ plan that involves using _Allura_ as bait?

AlluraofAltea: I didn’t think you would mind so much. considering

deadshotLance: considering?

AlluraofAltea: your own self-sacrificial tendencies. I didn’t realize that you possessed the sole monopoly on self-destruction via unwise heroics.

longshotKinkade: _d a m n_

griffinwings: holy shit

InaGegnHernaðurinu: Lance, are you all right? Should we send someone to check your vitals?

therealRizavi: Allura, Allura, we talked about this. Murder _after_ marriage so you can collect on the life insurance policy.

deadshotLance: I … honestly do not know what I was expecting. I’m … just gonna … shut up now.

AlluraofAltea: I still love you. 

AlluraofAltea: but I really need you to stop dying on me. It’s distressing.

deadshotLance: I’ll get right on that.

* * *

“Ow.”

Pidge blinks. She’s still on high alert and feeling uncomfortable in her own skin—too aware of Lance sitting across from her sorting all of her inventions and blueprints into spreadsheets titled things like ‘innocuous’, ‘probably not a problem’, ‘will make stock market explode (cake)’, ‘did no one watch _Jurassic Park_?’, and (really, Pidge tries not feel insulted about this one, really) ‘hello Armageddon starter kit.’ There are a _lot_ of entries under ‘Armageddon starter kit.’ Pidge had tried to protest that one, but Lance had just given her a long, judgmental look until she fell silent and went back poking at a project that she’d kind of forgotten about but was probably (?) innocent.

Self-doubt is a new feeling for Pidge. She doesn’t like it.

“Are you … okay?” Lance is making a complicated expression at his comms device that she doesn’t know how to read. Overnight Lance has turned into a foreign country that she doesn’t know—the terrain treacherous, the language incomprehensible—and she keeps finding herself feeling thrown adrift. “Did something happen?”

Lance glances at her, eyes narrowed into thoughtful slits, and then shrugs. The gesture is overdone, performative, and before she would have marked it down as Lance’s dramatics, but now she’s not sure. His smile is not altogether nice. There’s a sharp, contemplative edge to the way he studies her. She’s not sure if that’s new, or if she’s just never noticed it before.

“Nothing of importance, Pidgeon.” He makes a little hand flapping gesture. “Just the love of my life roasting me for my poor life choices.”

“Oh. Okay?”

He flashes her a big, sunny smile and goes back to sorting through her inventions list. 

“Do you have questions?” She offers. Lance raises an eyebrow. Heat climbs up her cheeks, which, what? What the fuck is this? Pidge frowns and waves a hand messy array of holoscreens Lance has arranged in front of him. Each with a different spreadsheet, some with blueprints enlarged, Lance’s own notes scrawled over them. “About my work.”

Lance waggles his wrist where his communicator flashes so often with incoming messages the alert light just glows with a steady blue light. “Nah. I got Ina-bean on standby.”

Pidge wants to protest that these are _her_ inventions, and thus if he has questions, he should be coming to _her_ , not to someone who hasn’t even _seen_ her inventions. She feels … replaced and hates it. But there’s nothing that she can say. All her normal ways of interacting with Lance feel stilted, awkward and unwelcome. After the entire debacle with the chess game—Lance going cold and sarcastic and sharp will be something that sticks with her for a long time, she already knows—Pidge has felt off-center. 

The nagging feeling that she never really knew Lance at all eats at her in ways Pidge refuses to let anyone see. Lance cocks his head to the side, watching her, and Pidge can feel the heat burning in her face climb to ears. (Which, what? What is going _wrong_ with her?) She realizes with a start that she’s been quiet for far too long. “Okay,” she says. “Um. Okay.”

Lance looks at her for a long time. He snorts, shakes his head, and goes back to flipping through holoscreens.

Quietly. 

It’s so weird that it makes Pidge’s shoulders itch. Lance is _never_ quiet. At least the Lance she knows isn’t ever quiet. He runs his mouth like he needs to talk to breathe. Normally Pidge finds it annoying as hell and would yell at him about it. She’d always thought she’d give her right arm (and maybe that’s a phrase she should strike from her personal lexicon, considering … everything) for Lance to just be _quiet_ and not bother her. But now she’s unsettled. Itching to break the silence. Lance sits across from her utterly silent, absorbed in his task, except for when he makes lightning fast replies on his wrist communicator. Wrapped up in conversations she doesn’t know. Bonding with a team that isn’t hers. Distant and remote, like they’re just two people sharing a room.

It takes her a moment to recognize the feeling, but when she does, she hates it even more. 

_Jealousy_. 

She’s being left behind. Again. But not the type of left behind that comes from the Galra kidnapping her dad and her brother and the only person her brother has ever loved as much as his own family. But the sort of left behind that comes from awkward middle school classrooms and elementary school playgrounds. Friends finding new, better friends and just … drifting away. 

Pidge’s chest hurts. 

“You know,” Lance drawls. Pidge jolts and her eyes snap up to Lance’s. He’s got his chin propped up on one fist, elbow resting on his crossed knee. “I think this is the only time I’ve ever seen you all shy and shit. It’s _adorable_.”

She throws a seat cushion before she can think about it. “Don’t make fun of me.”

He catches it with one hand easily as it goes through the holoscreens, making them flicker, and tosses it back. He sketches her a quick, seated bow. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Yes, you would.” Her chest is tight, and her eyes burn. Now that she’s identified the feeling, Pidge feels even worse. Hunk’d worried that they’d all drift apart after coming back to Earth. That the only reason they were ever really friends was down to necessity, deprivation, and stress. Remove those, Hunk’d argued, and there was nothing left. Pidge’d scoffed at it at the time, but now she’s not so sure Hunk’d been wrong. Maybe they all had been friends just because there’d been no one else, and now that Lance—the most social of them all—had options, he’d exercised them.

“You seem pretty certain of my dreams, Pidgeon.” Lance’s grin is crooked, lazy, and foreign. She doesn’t know this grin on his face and doesn’t know how to categorize it. “You come up with some nifty gadget to hack our dreams?”

“No,” she snaps without meaning to. She doesn’t want to fight with Lance, not again, but everything feels wrong, feels like an equation she’s solving wrong. “As if something like were possible.”

But now that he’s put the idea in her head, Pidge _wonders_. The Altean mind-meld devices could be adapted for sleeping use and then the data transmitted through. … hm. 

Lance is grinning at her, head cocked, when she looks back up at him.

“Thought of something, didn’t you?”

“And where should it be filed,” she returns, sarcastic and tart to hide how she feels flung out to sea and abandoned, “since everything I make is a weapon.”

“Everything is a weapon if you’re creative enough.” Lance flicks through his little holoscreens like he’s taking her request seriously and sends one spinning towards her. Pidge catches it with two fingers. “Also, follow up question there should always be: ‘weapon against _what_ ’?”

The holoscreen is the spreadsheet labeled ‘cake’. Lance and Ina’s notes spill down a side pane. As Pidge watches text in an eye-searing lime green lists the stock exchange values potentially impacted by Pidge’s fusion injector. It’s not an invention that, as far as Pidge is concerned, could be used as a weapon, but Ina clearly has ideas of using it to do … something.

“Are you two planning on destabilizing the stock market with my fusion injector?”

Lance makes a little humming noise in the back of his throat and waggles a hand. “Define ‘destabilize’.”

“ _Lance_.”

Pidge is thrown by the way he laughs. Teeth gleaming, full belly, and delighted. Like he’s letting her into a grand joke. This is not a Lance she knows and she’s not sure how to react. Interact. Lance had been a shallow river that she’d thought she’d fully charted. Lazy and comforting. Now she’s discovered he’s full of hidden currents, sweepers right under the water line, and sudden rapids. 

“We’ve got a few, ah, let’s call them contingency plans for dealing with the Blue Suns. Your darling, devious brother thinks we should try market warfare to drive that entire sector into collapse before taking them head on. Jamie, rule-abiding sweetheart that he is, thinks we should try for a RICO case and put on trial the entire governing board.”

He’s leaning back against the couch, arms thrown wide, and there’s something in the set of his shoulders, in the thoughtful gleam of his eyes, that makes her treat this carefully. She’d always avoided politics and diplomacy and the two-faced bullshit that left Shiro grinding his teeth and her brother hollow-eyed. Machines were easier. Bad code in meant bad code out. People were complicated. Pidge is starting to think, however, that this might be a playground for Lance. The idea makes her shiver.

“What do you think we should do?”

“Execute ‘em.”

He laughs at her when she startles. Lance makes a little gesture towards his throat. “Off with their heads, all of them.”

She throws the pillow cushion at him again. “Be serious.”

“Oh, but I am.”

“I’m going to smother you with a pillow cushion.” 

Pidge wants to grab those words and shove them back in her mouth the second she hears them. This conversation is definitely going better than the chess game (or, so much worse, the fight in the medical wards when Lance’s voice had gone so soft and so cutting) but she’s under no illusions that things were back to normal. She’s got a sneaking suspicion that she shouldn’t _want_ things to go back to normal. 

“So forceful!” Lance coos with a flutter of his lashes. “I do like a girl who knows her own mind.”

“How does Allura put up with you?” She can’t help the question. It comes out as an honest expression of baffled curiosity. 

Lance cocks his head to the side, resting his cheek against one fist, and that foreign, contemplative little smile is back. “Generally,” he says in a thoughtful tone she doesn’t recognize. “She doesn’t put up with any of my bullshit.”

“Neither do I,” Pidge snaps. One of Lance’s eyebrows goes straight for his hairline. “I mean. None of us do.”

Pidge doesn’t like how Lance half covers his mouth with one hand as he watches her. She’s pretty sure he’s laughing at her. Lance wobbles his other hand from one side to another. “Enh. You’d be amazed at the amount of shit I get away with.”

* * *

You have a direct message! Accept new contact? Y/N

Slav 324: Princess. delighted to see that you are not, in fact, dead. to what do i owe the honor?

AllureofAltea: I hear I have you to thank for that. So: Thank you. But I also come to beg a favor: I require an … objective adviser

Slav 324: ominous. also, there are more than a few that would object to the idea of me being _objective_

AlluraofAltea: clever word play. I appreciate it.

Slav 324: i thought that you might. though it fills me with a deep and nameless dread that you have come to _me_ with this request: your question, princess?

AlluraofAltea: less a question, more a series of probabilities for you calculate.

Slav 324: you could just as easily hand those over to 224352 or any of the rest of that tedious lot. the calculation of the infinite and permutable probabilities of the time way are, in fact, what the byfor race was designed for. it would fill them with a sense of purpose they feel but rarely to hark to your call, princess.

AlluraofAltea: yes, but they lack something that you have in great abundance

Slav 324: i am going to take a flying leap and guess that you do not mean virile animal magnetism 

AlluraofAltea: of all the responses I thought I would get to that statement, that was not one of them

Slav 324: i aim to be the unexpected. 

AlluraofAltea: and you succeed. But no, virile animal magnetism—and I cannot wait to explain this conversation to Shiro—is not what you have, though I’m sure that … no, I can’t actually type that with a straight face, I’m sorry. Compassion. You have compassion.

Slav 324: lies and slander. i have the warm and compassionate nature of dying starship engine at the far edge of dark space. but i’ll look over your matrixes if you promise to relay this conversation in its entirety to Shirogane and record his expressions as you do so.

AlluraofAltea: you do so love to watch him squirm

Slav 324: i exist on the far edge of a dying reality stream. i'll take my entertainments where i can find them.

* * *

mercurial-malcontent reblogged from strangemultiplicity:

shrike posted:

[image: _A screenshot of a tweet, the name has been scrubbed out, but the date places the tweet several days before the Platt City attacks. The tweet reads: “A woman shouted ‘Allura would fucking hate you!’ at her friend from across the bar and her friend promptly burst into tears. Bar has already earned its cover charge.”_ ]

*

roundab00t:

to be fair, I too would cry if Allura hated me.

*

les-biene:

if Allura hated me I’d just commit honorable suicide out of shame and remove the blight from my family name.

*

Maltji:

Oh god. Saaaaame.

23,061 notes  
Tags: #Allura of Altea, #funny, #mood, #if allura wouldn’t like you, #then you need to take a long hard look at yourself, #and fix your shit

* * *

Keith’s not real sure what he’s done to deserve being the impromptu pillow wall between a pair of highly trained, entirely too energetic resistance fighters, but he’s pretty sure he doesn’t deserve it.

“Keith,” Allura whines as she tries to eel away from Nadia. “You’re supposed to keep her back.”

“What? Why?” Keith tries to untangle himself, but Nadia manages to slither halfway across his body to keep him pinned to the bed as she makes a swipe at Allura’s wrist communicator. He bucks his hips to try to dislodge her. She hisses at him. It’d be far more alarming if he hadn’t seen a startled Kolivan once fluff up twice his own size and hiss at a stack of paperwork that had tumbled from wherever he’d hidden it, terrifying both of them for half a second with visions of drowning under requisition forms that Kolivan flatly refused to accept were now part of his day to day life. He hisses back.

Nadia doesn’t even blink. “Stay still,” she barks at him. “She’s not supposed to have that. She’s supposed to _sleep_.”

Allura cuddles her wrist communicator to her chest and gives them both a deeply betrayed look. “I slept.”

“Twenty-seven minutes is not sleep, princess,” Nadia says. “Give me that.”

“No!”

“Can you two have this argument somewhere else?” Keith asks with no real sense that either of them is paying any attention to anything coming out of his mouth. “Somewhere that’s not on top of me?”

Allura shoves his shoulder. “You’re my paladin. Defend me!”

“He’s your paladin,” Nadia agrees as she tries to make another grab for Allura’s communicator. Allura bunches herself up against the headboard and growls. “He should be making sure you take care of yourself.”

“I’m fine!”

“Your definition of fine only means ‘not actively bleeding, on fire, or otherwise dying’ and thus can be discounted.”

Nadia gets an elbow into Keith’s kidneys as she tries to pin Allura down and at this point Keith has had quite enough, thank you. He looks up pleadingly at Hunk who sighs deeply. Keith has honestly no idea how he’s managed to get himself into this situation, he’s almost entirely certain that it’s not his fault, and at this point he’ll take any escape he can get.

“I should just let you figure this out for yourself,” Hunk tells him as he plucks Nadia off him. She squirms like a scuffed kitten before going limp. Hunk hefts her over one shoulder with no visible strain. “It’s like a growth moment for you or something,” he continues as he catches Allura’s wrist with one hand. “No,” he tells her gently, “give me that.” He plucks her wrist communicator off her as she sulks at him. “I shouldn’t interfere with your learning opportunities,” he tells Keith as if he hadn’t (gently, sweetly!) corralled two of the deadliest people on the Atlas with no discernable effort as far as Keith could see. “But I am a sucker, and you have even sadder puppy dog eyes than Lance.”

Keith sputters with wordless offense.

Nadia manages to eel herself into position to knee Hunk in the ribs. He grunts and drops her. She bounces over to Allura and crosses her arms over her chest. Both of them glower at Hunk who, sensibly, cowers under their combined disapproval.

“What would your moms say,” Nadia chides him. “Talking like we’re just here so your favorite disaster of a human being can learn to be functional?”

Hunk blinks, blushes, and splutters. “That’s not what I meant!”

Allura makes a faint noncommittal noise in the back of her throat and Hunk’s blush deepens.

There’s a quiet moment where Allura and Nadia consider him and Hunk and then share a long, silent look with each other. Keith doesn’t really understand their relationship. He doesn’t really understand _them_. They’ve formed a strange, insular community of two built upon things outside his experience and without his notice. 

It makes him feel, somehow, lonely.

Nadia offers her arm to Allura. It’s simple gesture but breathtaking in its old-world courtliness. Keith didn’t know Nadia had the capacity for such grace. Allura places one delicate, slim-fingered hand on Nadia’s arm and that’s enough. That’s it. Nadia grins wide and feral and delighted before pulling Allura up onto her unsteady feet and tucking Allura close to her side. They consider each other again. Two desperately pretty girls in a horribly unpretty war.

Nadia makes a flowing, graceful gesture towards the door—Keith thinks it maybe has a fancy name, a name James would know—and Allura gives one of her complicated little smiles. Without a word to him or Hunk, they sweep out of the room. 

“Do you get the feeling that we maybe fucked up?” Hunk asks.

Keith opens his mouth and finds precisely zero words to explain anything about anything. He closes his mouth. Shrugs. Hunk sighs.

* * *

Group Chat: go ‘round the prickly pear

therealRizavi: I am putting down our lovely princess for naptimes. All calls will be blocked and rerouted to my comms device and if you try to circumvent this, I will rick roll you!

therealRizavi: it is time for all good princesses to go sleepy-bye because she’s starting to go all ashy with exhaustion again.

therealRizavi: so for serious: fuck off for like four hours and let her sleep or I will gut you.

* * *

His sister is trying to murder Lance when he walks into the little observation deck. Matt pauses, leaning against the open door, to watch. If Atlas were any other ship, the servos would whine, just slightly, at being forced open by his refusal to move out of sensor range. A faint, nearly-silent complaint of mechanics and electricity forced into waiting attendance by the very human inability to make a decision.

Atlas, however, isn’t like any other ship and she holds position just fine.

Katie needs to work on her hand to hand combat skills, Matt decides as he watches her try to smother Lance with a seat cushion. Lance is letting her, keeping control of the tussle without Pidge being any wiser for it. There’s a waiting sort of laziness to his movement, to the way he keeps her precariously angled so the slightest shift in his hips would send her sprawling across the floor. He’s got the upper hand in a million little ways and Katie doesn’t seem to see them around the fact that she’s sitting on top of his chest and shoving a cushion in his face. 

“I can’t tell if my concern over your reported spat is misplaced or completely warranted,” he says with just enough teasing that Katie’s head pops up immediately with a defensive scowl.

“Help,” Lance says lazily. “I’m being murdered. Help.”

Matt plucks the seat cushion out his sister’s hands. “You probably deserve it.”

Lance manages to give an expressive shrug despite being pinned to the little settee.

“Let him up, Katie.” Matt holds the seat cushion above his head while Katie tries to grab for it. Her cheeks are a bit pink, but it hasn’t seemed to fully percolate through her head that she’s sitting directly over Lance’s hips with one hand pinning him in place. “His squad leader needs him.”

“Jamie hasn’t said anything about needing me,” Lance protests lightly. He waves his wrist communicator to emphasize his point. “Just going on about his ongoing sneaky spy shit and whining for coffee.”

“That’s what I mean.” Lance arches an eyebrow at him. Something’s settled inside him, like he’s come to a decision and is content with where those conclusions take him. Katie makes a play for the seat cushion again and Matt thumps her on the head with it. “Stop that,” he tells her as she scowls at him. “Go collect him,” he says to Lance, who continues to watch them with a carefully bored expression that borders on insolence, “before he commits to something stupid because he’s sleep-deprived and anxious with it.”

“Like Allura would let him.”

“Just do it, as a personal favor to me? There’s something upsetting about watching a man use paperwork as a self-soothing ritual.”

That makes Lance laugh. It startles Katie, which is adorable, and she stares at him with wide eyes. “True enough,” Lance says like he doesn’t even notice a hundred some odd pounds of Green Paladin sitting on him. “I think it’s a control thing, but when I tell him he’s got a fetish, he throws things at me.”

“When did James become your squad leader?”

Katie’s question comes out more plaintive than Matt thinks she intends, and Lance flicks a quick look at him before shrugging expressively. It’s impressive how he keeps managing that while being pinned down. “Enh. You know how it is. Run a few missions with a guy and he gets all attached. Clingy. Has emotions. Starts filing paperwork for you. And then _bam_ you have a new squad leader all shiny right out of the box.”

“Is that all it takes?” Matt asks idly. “If I’d known, I’d filed paperwork for you ages ago.”

Lance flutters his eyelashes at him. “You flirt, you.” He stretches, arms high over the edge of the settee, legs straining for a moment. Katie inhales sharply when the move raises her several inches higher. She doesn’t quite clutch at Lance, but Matt can see the impulse. Lance doesn’t seem to notice. “And nah, Jamie is just one of many.” Now he flutters his lashes at Katie, who turns faintly pink and scowls at him. “I’m in high demand, you know.”

“Matt said, ‘squad leader’ and you immediately thought of James,” Katie snaps, refusing to be distracted. “Why?”

Lance sighs so hard his bangs flutter. “Simple process of elimination.” Lance holds up four fingers, carefully ticking one off as he goes. “It’s not Allura because Nadia is corralling her to sleepy time. Can’t be Keith, because if Keith needed something Mattie here would go get Shiro. Can’t be Shiro, because if Shiro needed something Mattie’d just do it himself. That just leaves Jamiekins.”

“Stop calling me Mattie,” Matt says while Katie frowns at this chain of logic. “And please call James ‘Jamiekins’ to his face.”

“Oh, I do,” Lance says as he rolls to his feet. Katie gives a little yip of surprise when he keeps her pinned in place with one arm under her thighs and hips. He grins at her. Matt chokes back a laugh when Katie goes an immediate and brilliant red straight up to her ears. She refuses to look Lance in the face. Matt bites his lips, hard, when Lance glances over at him and rolls his eyes. “But Jamie just sighs at me. Takes all the fun out of teasing him when he refuses to respond. Can you drop down now, Pidgeon? You’re heavy and my delicate body isn’t meant for such a strain.”

Katie punches him, hard, straight in the shoulder socket, but even with that Lance is careful when he sets her on her feet. 

Lance dusts himself off with exaggerated gestures. “Did he whine at you for coffee too?”

“Yep. Why?”

“I am, as always, the most obedient of soldiers,” Lance says, pressing one hand to his chest and giving a little bow. “And as an obedient soldier I should attend my commanding officer, shouldn’t I?”

“Shiro is your commanding officer,” Katie snaps. There’s an odd sort of displaced possessiveness in her tone that has Matt and Lance sharing a look.

Lance waggles a hand. “Enh. Let’s just say my chain of command is somewhat … flexible.”

“I didn’t realize authority issues were contagious,” Matt says mildly while Katie processes Lance’s blithe dismissal.

Lance flashes a grin at him and Matt sighs.

“Well, I need to go attend my darling Lieutenant. Don’t wait up.” Lance waggles his fingers at them in a parody of a schoolgirl’s finger wave goodbye. He blinks when Matt keeps pace with him. “Um?”

“Wrangling recalcitrant officers is a skill,” Matt tells him sweetly. “I’d like to expand my repertoire.” 

The look he gets is hurtful in the depths of its skepticism. Lance rolls his eyes expressively when Matt tells him this. “Is this what it’s like to deal with me, I wonder?” Lance asks the room at large. “Is this penance for my sins? Karma? I don’t deserve this.” Katie mutters something under her breath that Matt doesn’t catch, but Lance does given the way his eyes light up for a minute and he laughs. “Yeah. Okay. Maybe, but I need to go get coffee since my best use is, apparently, as an odd jobs boy.”

Katie makes a skeptical face but closes her mouth when Matt shakes his head at her. He’s got a pretty good idea of what Lance’s plan is, and if he’s right, it’s gonna be fucking hilarious. They tag along after Lance as he meanders towards the Atlas’ DFAC area and watch as he carefully makes coffee. He chatters cheerfully at them, at the Atlas, at the room in general. Charming, beautiful and completely devious behind that vapid display. His poor baby sister watches him like a hawk that’s just had a baby bunny turn around and try to take a significant chunk out of its hide. He’d feel bad for her, but he has a feeling that outside of Princess Allura and maybe that old man, Coran, the Voltron paladins didn’t really know what they had in Lance.

Matt sighs as he leans against a wall, watching Lance carefully measure out something that looks like sweetener into two mugs. Problem with innocent noble types like Keith and poor Hunk, they never really notice deviousness until it guts them in the night. Lance foists fresh mugs of coffee into their hands. Katie eyes it dubiously but accepts when he does.

Shiro though…. Matt sips his coffee carefully. Shiro has no excuse for not recognizing what’s under his nose in the form of one Lance Serrano.

“Shiro teach you this trick?”

Lance laughs so hard he almost spills the two mugs of coffee he carefully carries as he trots back to James’ little hidey-hole. He fumbles for them and through sheer unholy reflexes manages to keep them from spilling. Lance snorts. “Like hell. Got the idea from that video clip Keith posted a while ago.” Lance gives him a sly side eye. “You know. The one where Shiro drugged you two workaholics.”

Katie makes a complicated face and hides her expression by taking a too big sip of coffee and then spluttering when it burns her. Matt just laughs.

“He’s got a surprisingly sneak streak,” Matt agrees.

“Awww,” Lance coos. “You’re cute when you’re all doting ‘n shit.”

Lance leaves him sputtering in blind-sided offense. His little sister, darling gremlin that she is, loudly sips her coffee and eyes him over her mug. He glares at her until she slowly raises one eyebrow. 

“I don’t dote,” he hisses at her.

“Mmmhmm.”

“I don’t!”

Fortunately, Matt is saved from his little sister and her disrespectful disbelief by Lance swanning through the doors of James’ makeshift office. Lance flounces up to James’ desk and rests one hip against it. He stares down at the top of James’ head until James looks up and blinks at him. There’s something distant and a little manic to James’ gaze.

“Is that coffee?”

Lance makes a noncommittal noise. It’s fascinating how neither he nor Katie seem to have registered for James as he focuses on Lance with the intensity of a missile tracking system.

“You know,” Lance says conversationally as he holds both mugs out of James’ reach. “I am pretty certain I am not your hired fucking help, Griffin. Why am I doing your coffee runs?”

“Because I asked nicely?” James says as he scrambles up and over to Lance’s side, reaching for one of the mugs with grasping fingers. “Oh god, give me that.”

“Have some fucking manners. I thought you were supposed to be the blue-blooded officer and a gentlemen type in this unholy clusterfuck we call a military. And you did not fucking ask fucking nicely,” Lance snipes at him as James neatly plucks one of the mugs from him. “You told Matt that you would kill everyone on the Atlas and then yourself with sonic razors if someone did not bring you caffeine in the next thirty minutes and unfortunately no one on Team Voltron recognizes the difference between an assassination threat, a mental breakdown, and business as god damned usual with your high strung bitchfits, the key factor being there is _none_. Why are you such a pain in my ass?”

“I’m pretty certain I didn’t say all that,” James says mildly as he cradles the mug to his chest carefully. 

Matt shrugs expressively.

Lance scowls at him, too large and too dramatic to be anything other than pure performance. “You’re so sleep-deprived you couldn’t tell what you actually said from a very detailed auditory hallucination. I shouldn’t even be giving you _any_ caffeine. Ryan’s going to have my head for dereliction of duty or some shit.”

James downs one mug all in one go. It’s horrifying to watch. “I love you too, El. Give me the other one.”

Lance holds the mug away from him and scowls. There’s something deeply performative to the entire thing, but James is too sleep-deprived and stressed to catch it. The entire thing is _masterfully_ done. It’s impressive. Matt is impressed. Lance elbows James in the side as James reaches around for the mug.

“No. Fuck off, this one is mine.”

James ignores him and plucks it out of his hands. Lance sighs as James downs all of that mug too and then stares mournfully at the bottom of the mug.

“Is that all of the coffee? Like. All of it?”

Lance takes both mugs from him and puts them on the desk. “No,” he says with put-upon look. “But it’s all you are going to get. You know your liver is about the size of a walnut right now? If I let you have any more, Ina-bean is going to have me strung up by my entrails and I need to be in her bad books like I need a hole in my head. Sit down before you fall over, you complete disaster of a human being. How did you end up being my commanding officer again?”

James hiccups lightly. “Because I’m the only one who des any paperwork, that’s why. The rest of you run away and hide from it. I’m pretty sure Iverson only promoted me because he never wanted to read another report written by Nadia every again.”

“You know,” Lance says as he steers James back into his chair. There’s a certain boneless quality to the way James slumps into it. “That’s entirely fair. Speaking of reports. What the fuck is this idea of using Allura as bait?”

James flaps a hand at him. “Save the overprotective stick. She can kick your ass, my ass, and everyone else’s ass without smudging her lipstick.”

“She doesn’t wear lipstick.”

“Don’t get pedantic, El, it doesn’t suit you. Here,” James flips a holoscreen around so Lance can glare at it instead of James, “look at this. Before you start yelling at me, one, most of it is her idea, two, she’s running it by Slav 324 right now for viability, and three, you’ve got a key role in all of this, so that should make you happy.”

“I live to serve,” Lance drawls as he spins the holoscreen into an easy reading position, “or so they fucking tell me.”

“Why are you such a sarcastic little shit?”

“Learned defensive mechanism from dealing with your nonsense. Also, there’s no way we can keep this plan entirely inhouse. Too many moving parts.”

James makes a wide gesture that encompasses Matt and Katie. Matt quirks an eyebrow at him. “We have an entire new universe of possibilities open before us, El, now that we are all reconciled. Expand your imagination.”

“My imagination is plenty expanded. It mostly gives me detailed scenarios where we all die messily because we collectively have the communication strategies of a colony of monks sworn to silence. Also, Team Voltron’s idea of sneaky is blowing the joint sky high in the middle of an infiltration missions rather than as a general announcement of their presence. Your cunning plan as a teeny, tiny flaw in it if you are relying on them to be anything other than brute force hammer.”

James laughs and then yawns massively. Matt’s jaw aches in sympathy at the loud pop that echoes through the room.

James blinks. Frowns. Blinks again. “Did you drug the coffee?”

Lance leans back out of James’ range and grins. There’s something terribly gentle to that smile. “The question, o captain my captain, is not whether I put a solid ten milligrams of zaleplon in your coffee; the question is why do you keep falling for it?” Lance pushes at James’ shoulder as James tries to surge out of his chair to loom over Lance. James falls back heavily and blinks muzzily up at Lance. “Go to sleep before I have to inject the stuff straight into your miserable workaholic veins.”

“You sneaky sonuvabitch,” James says wonderingly. “You absolute sonu—” James’ litany of insults is broken by another monstrous yawn. His eyelashes flutter as he fights to stay awake. “I have work.”

Lance reaches out and drags a hand through James’ hair. James moves with it, eyelids dropping as the drug rampages through his system. “You always have work, Jamie,” Lance tells him gently. “It’ll keep. You can sleep when you’re dead, remember? And right now, you _are_ dead.”

“No.” James’ voice has gone little-boy-petulant. A toddler fighting nap time. Lance sighs and moves his hand to scratch through James’ undercut. James slowly crumples in his seat. After a moment he begins to snore.

“Need help with him?”

Lance shakes his head as he carefully gathers James up. With a little grunt, Lance settles James against his hip so he’s got both arms looped under James’ thighs and hips with one of James’ arms over Lance’s shoulders. James’ head lolls against Lance’s neck. “Nah,” Lance says as he carefully navigates his way to the door. “He’s not heavy.”

Matt knows for a fact this is not true, but there’s no way to argue with Lance when he’s gotten it into his head that his people need to be taken care of. It’s interesting who does and does not qualify at this point as one of Lance’s ‘people.’ Matt wonders when James’d managed to wedge himself so firmly into that group. He steps out of the way. Lance gives him a smile like he’s done something clever. Katie steps in front of him, frowning fit to break her face. Lance cocks his head.

“I can look over James and Allura’s plans.” Katie’s jaw is set like she expects and argument. There’s a fine tremble running through her. Matt wonders if Lance notices.

“If you want to?” Lance says with a little eyebrow arch. “I mean, the two of them are currently sleep-deprived as fuck, running on adrenaline, and not exactly thinking straight. I’m willing to bet good money that a solid sixty percent of their plan is ‘shoot the fucker,’ but if you feel like wasting an hour.”

Katie’s chin goes up like she’s spoiling for a fight. “Then the other forty percent is the bones of a decent plan.”

Something complicated happens in Lance’s expression. He resettles James. “If you want to go wading into an argument with Slav 324, be my guest.”

“I see you’ve had the pleasure,” Matt says dryly and Lance laughs.

“Fuck no. I have a sense of self-preservation, but I’ve seen what that profane little anxiety ferret does to other people’s blood pressure and have the good sense to avoid him like I avoid most things that are both bad for my health and no fun.”

“I like Slav,” Katie says defiantly. 

Lance gives her another complicated look and then shrugs as best as he is able around James’ completely slack form. “Sure. You go do that, kiddo. Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to go put my fearless leader to bed because he’s just started drooling on my neck which is much less enjoyable than one might think.”

* * *

You have a direct message! Accept new contact? Y/N

Slav 324: my day just gets busier and busier

Slav 324: greetings green paladin, why are you harassing me at this hellish hour

Slav 324: aren’t you busy discovering fun and exciting ways of killing your teammates—by which I mostly mean the Princess—with overly complicating bits of technology?

thesmartone: I know Allura sent you her plans. I have James’ set. We should talk. I want to help.

Slav 324: please give me a moment. i need to stick my head outside and double check that hell has not, in fact, frozen over.


	18. hurry up and wait pt3

James flips up a holoscreen, winces when it pops up a bright and blaring blue that throws odd shadows across the room, and hastily sets it to nighttime mode when Lance starts to grumble. He adds it to his suite of floating screens—he’s reminded in an odd start of nostalgia of the navigation fairies from the VRMMOs his brothers used to play—and waits until Lance settles back down.

Lance curls tighter against his side—how he managed to make such a tiny ball out of his lanky self, James does not know—and presses his face into the pillows. There’s another round of grumbling before his breathing evens out into something slow and heavy. James blows out a sigh and gets back to work.

He doesn’t get far before the very faint, very high whine of servitors on a steady undulation breaks his concentration. James arches one eyebrow slowly as the Atlas’ automatic doors try repeatedly to close around Ryan only to reopen after coming within a set distance away from the pilot’s unresponsive form. The distance gets closer with each iteration. The Atlas may not be a not a subtle creature, James decides, but she is a very funny one.

“Are you going to come in?” He asks politely. “I think the Atlas is trying to make a point.”

Ryan steps into the room just far enough for Atlas to slide the door shut behind him. There’s a chirpy sort of ring tone that chimes as it shuts. Ryan half turns to consider it. He points with one finger a thoughtful expression. “That’s new, isn’t it?”

“I think you were getting told off. Polite-like.”

Ryan shakes his head. “There’s something a little worrying about living inside a ship that has opinions but can only express them through silent acts of passive-aggression.”

James snorts. 

“I thought you were sleeping?”

“I was.” James scrolls through one holoscreen before aggregating it into a cascading set. “And then I woke up. And now I’m working.”

“Brother.”

“I slept.” James can’t stop the defensive hunch to his shoulders. His voice drops into a mumble entirely without his authorization. “For, like, an hour.”

“ _Brother_.”

“I’m resistant to zalephon,” James defends. The holoscreens dance between them. Ryan swipes an entire swath of them out of his way so he can glower—sculpted brows pulling down low over midnight-dark eyes—in a way would be frankly alarming if James didn’t know Ryan and all the ways he expresses affection. It still has him crossing his arms in a defensive huddle. “You know that.”

Ryan sighs and slouches onto the long daybed Lance had managed to wrestle them into before passing out himself. It’s barely wide enough for three grown ass men, but, somehow, they make it work. Ryan runs a hand through Lance’s messy curls. His hair is getting long, James notices, entirely out of regulation, and makes Lance look even younger than his baby face normally does. 

Lance turns towards Ryan like a sunflower following light. 

“He tries to drug you and knocks his own ass out?”

“He never did have anything even approximating common sense.” James gives Ryan a moment to digest this before adding: “he keeps forgetting that, one, I am resistant to zalephon and anything related to it, and, two, that he has a sensitivity to it.”

Ryan sighs. Lance’s hair is a rich golden brown against Ryan’s ebony skin. The contrast between them makes their beauty come into focus. Lance’s lithe form a counterbalance to Ryan’s strength. There’s something delicately poised between the two of them that’s both lovely and comforting to see. James grimaces at himself. He’s getting sappy as fuck in his old age. Sentimentality. That’s what this is. Four years of non-stop war against a massively over-teched foe and he’s getting godsdamned soppy. He runs a hand through his hair before getting back to work.

“An hour of catnapping isn’t sleep,” Ryan says with a judgmental side-eye. 

“Says the man who sleeps a grand told of four hours a night and then naps everywhere and anywhere the rest of the day.”

“In my next life, I’ll be reborn as a cat.”

“In your next life, you’ll be reborn as a slug as karmic punishment for all the bullshit you put me through.”

Ryan shoves at him the best as he’s able around Lance’s bundled up form. James shoves back. They have a spirited, if awkward, little tussle until Lance whines, high and displeased, when James lands on him heavily. He and Ryan back up and eye Lance with concern. Lance snuffles one, wiggles until he’s wedged between them, and goes still.

James pokes Lance’s cheek as he starts to drool, just a little bit. “This one, on the other hand, could sleep through the apocalypse.”

“From what the little one with the superiority complex, Matt’s sister, says, he’s pretty much has on more than one occasion.”

“Pidge.”

“Yeah. Her.”

James sighs. “You’re gonna have to learn their names eventually, Ryan.”

“Enh,” Ryan shrugs before carefully gathering Lance into his arms. Lance, being two-thirds limb and one-third liquid-state boy, flops in his grasp like a cat that doesn’t want to be held. He snuffles in his sleep, snorts, and then manages to shove his face into the crook of Ryan’s neck.

“Taking him back to his mistress?” 

“Nadia thinks if we can keep them in the same place, they’ll be less likely to engage in acts of self-destructive heroism.”

“Her optimism is, as always, endearingly misplaced,” James says dryly as Ryan maneuvers Lance around until he’s more or less secure. “I still think we should chip them.”

“Jamie. No.”

“I’m just saying: it would solve a lot of problems.”

“No, Jamie. Microchipping your squad mates is not socially acceptable behavior. We’ve talked about this.”

James makes a rude noise and turns back to his paperwork and mission planning as Ryan leaves the room laughing.

* * *

#### The Return of the Met: the First Post-Invasion Gala Announced!

As the world rebuilds after the Galra Warlord Sendak’s invasion and occupation of the planet, the directors of the Costume Center wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, largely destroyed by the invasion and occupation despite dedicated efforts to preserve the collection, have announced a theme for the Met Gala. The decision to hold the Gala, a centuries old event attended by the Earth’s glitterati, has been deeply contentious but Diziet Sma, director of the Costume Center, maintains that the revival of the Gala is “a call to find beauty, joy and pride in the indomitable spirit of The Resistance and a flat refusal to give way to the brutishness of despair.”

[image: _A tall woman dressed in work fatigues that are both incredibly chic and bring out the deep golden highlights of her dark skin addresses a small assembly of reporters who seem cowed by her mere presence._ ]

Director Sma announced the theme of the first Gala post-invasion is ‘insurgence/resurgence’ in honor of the resistance to the Galra empire and the intergalactic rebuilding efforts. While the guest list of the Gala is currently a closely held secret, with Director Sma playing coy with speculation that the invitees will include a number of alien dignitaries, the prices of the tickets have been posted. In a break from tradition the price of admission at the Gala will not be merely monetary—unsurprising given the chaotic state of the global economy—but a prerequisite number of hours spent on confirmed rebuilding projects.

_click here for more_

Related stories in Fashion  & Society: 
  1. Museum Curators Around the Globe Look to the Met
  2. Allura & Romelle: The Altean Icons of the Resistance
  3. Intergalactic Fashion Trends [slideshow]
  4. PLN Kogane Reacts to Relationship Speculation
  5. Empire, Resistance, and Art: Why We Need the Met



* * *

breeliss reblogged from roundab00t:

bbtree posted:

Does anyone remember when Lance started doing this to Keith?

[image: _a blurry picture of a holoscreen shows the data entry form for the Church of Latter Day Saint’s free bible and bible study guide program. The site declares, in cheerful pink, that bible will be delivered by two missionaries who will share an uplifting message with the recipient. PLN Keith Kogane’s name filled out (but the details of his mailing address are blurred) with the text “this is gonna drive him nuts” over the top._ ]

[image: _the picture shows the scene through a mirror. Keith is boxed in between two missionaries who are alarmingly well-pressed and cheerful. He has a bible in one hand and the expression of a man who expects to blow up at any moment. The picture is overlaid with the text: “mission success.”_ ]

*

foxymoon:

You say this like he did this only the once.

[image: _it’s a picture of a holoscreen again with the same site for free bibles delivered by missionaries with Keith’s information filled out once again (still with the mailing information blurred out) and the text: “it’s only science if you repeat it” over top._ ]

[image: _the picture is through a mirror again. Keith has another bible gripped in one hand. His knuckles might be going white. He’s cornered by a different pair of missionaries, but they also possess the particular starched quality of missionaries who have just received their particular calling. Their eyes are very bright. The picture is overlaid with the text: “test 2: success.”_ ]

[image: _it’s a holoscreen with the site again. Keith’s name is filled out. Again. The text over the picture reads: “repetition is key.”_ ]

[image: _the mirror is streaked but the scene in the background is clear. Keith has his eyes closed with the expression of a man searching for new wells of patience. The missionaries look d e l i g h t e d. The text reads: “time to murder: t-30 seconds.”_ ]

I have the entire set if people want me to post them.

*

bicon-voltron:

… how long did he do this for?

*

roundab00t:

 _months_.

*

breeliss:

he was still doing it until he died. Now Keith will never know. And honestly? I feel like this is a legacy that Lance would be happy with.

5,322 notes  
Tagged: #Lance Serrano, #the practical joker of my heart, #things to do to the people who annoy you, #send them hand delivered bibles, #for months, #and never say a thing

* * *

vixenhearts reblogged from foxymoon:

error404-fucks-not-found posted:

in honor of this post I present you the incomplete list of things that LTJG Lance Serrano Has Sent People Via the United Earth Postal Services:

**1\. Bibles Hand-Delivered by Mormon Missionaries**

[image: _the picture is through a mirror and slightly blurry because Lance, foregrounded, is laughing so hard he’s got one hand on the mirror to keep himself upright, in the background—which is most of the shot—Keith is arguing furiously with a pair of missionaries who appear to have transcended to a higher plane of existence at the mere idea of getting the chance to convert the Black Paladin_ ]

**2\. Glitter Dicks**

[image: _LTJG Ryan Kinkade stands in the middle of the MFE common room with a bemused expression on his face and a bag of what looks to be candies made in the shape of dicks. There is glitter all over him, the couch, the floor, and LTJG Nadia Rizavi who holds up a sign reading “Eat A Bag Of Dicks!” in glittery font. She’s laughing so hard the card is slightly blurry._ ]

**3\. Eggplant Emojibator**

[gif: _LTJG Lance Serrano ducks as his sister, LCDR Veronica Serrano, flings an eggplant shaped vibrator at his head. His shit eating grin is so wide it might actually meet up around the back of his head._ ]

**4\. Glitter Bomb**

[gif: _Lance scrambles out of the reach of LT James Griffin as the lieutenant vaults a couch. James is covered in glitter—it sticks to his uniform, dusts his hair and cheekbones, and coats everything in the MFE common room._ ]

**5\. An Angry Potato**

[image: _Nadia holds up a potato that has an elaborate angry face painted onto it. She seems unsure if she should laugh, flinging it at Lance (who is definitely laughing), or put it in a place of honor._ ]

[image: _the angry potato has been placed, with every indication of care, in the center of a bookshelf on a plush pillow. It has a little plaque next to it. Unfortunately, what’s written on the plaque is illegible._ ]

**6\. A Dick Trophy**

[image: _Rebel Matt Holt holds a gold phallus trophy with every indication of pride. The phallus is lovingly rendered with veins and curves slightly to the left. The plaque on its base reads “Congratulations! You are a first-place dickhead!”_ ]

**7\. Butthurt Care Package**

[image: _James picks through a bright red box that proclaims itself as a “butthurt care package!” It contains tissues, tampons, and soothing anal cream. James wears a particularly resigned expression._ ]

**8\. A Moaning Congratulations Card**

[image: _Nadia opens and closes a little cardboard card with an expression of rapt delight. Next to her, James has his face buried in his hands. Ina regards both of them with a faint expression of concern._ ]

**9\. A Detailed Map Out of Your Ass**

[image: _Veronica has Lance pinned to the ground via a headlock and seems to be giving him a vigorous noggie as Lance tries to squirm out of her grip. Next to them on the couch sits a box with a flashlight, batteries, and a detailed map of what appears to be the lieutenant commander’s ass with different parts labeled._ ]

**10\. Flowers**

[image: _PLN Allura of Altea stands in the middle of a room filled with flowers. They spill off the nightstand, cover the bed, fill the bookshelves. The bouquets are of every imaginable flower, but they mostly seem composed of stargazer lilies. The princess has her hands pressed to her mouth and seems very close to tears._ ]

* 

Strange-Multiplicity:

Basically, what I have learned from this, frankly amazing, post is that if you annoyed Lance Serrano, he would absolutely go find weird, potentially offensive things to send to you via the United Earth Postal Service.

Glitter preferred. 

*

Ya-vayanse-alv:

This is indeed the correct lesson to learn. 

*

sequence-fairy:

just … how did Keith never figure out the bible thing? How?

*

roundab00t:

look, Keith is just out here, Trying His Best. And does anyone ever really know where missionaries come from???

(also, Serrano is a sneaky mf)

*

foxymoon:

excuse me while I cry forever about that last one.

123,456 notes  
Tagged: #Lance Serrano, #Allura of Altea, #that last one hurts me, #be the chaotic force of pettiness you want to see in the world

* * *

Keith had more than a few moments of trepidation about breaching James’ makeshift sanctuary, particularly after Ryan (cradling Lance’s sleeping form like Lance was something precious rather than a royal pain in everyone’s ass and that had been a glorious mindfuck) had found him and all but ordered him to go track down the MFE’s workaholic squadron leader. Keith tries not to dwell on the fond exasperation in Ryan’s expression when he’d talked about James or his cool dismissal of Keith once he’d said his piece. 

But James is sitting as neat as you please at an impromptu workspace made of a cannibalized nightstand, two bookshelves and a stool. He looks completely at ease with himself despite what Keith’d been led to believe. James has the knuckles of one hand pressed against his mouth, glowering at what Keith can only assume is another report. 

Matt had wondered, out loud and at length, if burying himself in paperwork is James’ primary stress response. Watching James shuffle between blueprints of a building Keith doesn’t recognize, weapon statistics and what looks, to Keith’s utter bewilderment, like the sketches for a formal evening gown, Keith thinks Matt might be onto something.

“Need something, hotshot?” James asks without look at him. “Or are you just here to stare in mute wonder at someone who actually gets shit done?”

“I get shit done,” Keith retorts, nettled. “I’ve run way more missions than you.”

Keith expects snide commentary and the beginnings of a fight— _wants_ that fight far more than he really feels like he should admit—but James just makes a non-committal noise in the back of his throat and flips open Lance’s combat statistics. Keith shifts, unnerved, when James lapses into silence, apparently perfectly content to continue to ignore Keith in favor of writing his latest report.

“Are you seriously doing paperwork?”

“Might as well get a jump on it while Iverson can’t give me anymore. I think the man is trying to drown me under mandatory requisition request forms—now that I’m dead he’s gonna find out I’ve been using them as the support structures for Nadia’s blanket forts and that’s gonna be a whole new item on my Skippy List. But, anyway, no, I might actually finish everything if I can just get a quiet couple of hours without anyone trying to shoot me, drug me, or engage me in pointless small talk.” He looks up from his report and stares at the far wall, gaze distant. “Of course, if that happens, I think it might be a sign of the impending apocalypse. Not even the Galra invasion stopped military paperwork.”

“You are _ridiculous_.”

“Yeah, I hear that a lot.”

They lapse into silence once again.

Keith stares at the top of James’ head as he goes back to whatever the hell thing it is he’s decided needs to be written write this second rather than, Keith doesn’t know, trying to recover from having a building dropped on him, having his entire neuro-architecture rebuilt from the ground up by crazy Altean alchemy-slash-magic-slash-Allura’s stubborn refusal to let anyone die _ever_ , and then being chased around by mercenaries with technology apparently stolen right out of Pidge’s own stash of toys. 

Keith contemplates physically hauling James into a bed but that had resulted in … alarming events last time. He’s pretty sure he’s far more comfortable with said alarming events than he should be. He squirms, just a little, and stomps on those memories before they get any more embarrassing—or revealing.

The silence drags on as Keith tries to untangle how he feels. He thinks he’s conflicted. About everything.

“Um,” he says eloquently and then peters off into silence when he can’t figure out how to follow up that stunning conversational foray. He grimaces. Fortunately, James has apparently decided his reports are far more interesting than Keith could ever hope to be and hasn’t looked up to notice the frankly stunning array of expressions Keith can twist his face into. Small mercies, Keith guesses, but he’ll take them.

James wrinkles his nose as he skims a column of numbers before coming to some internal decision. It’s a cute look, Keith decides, and then feels deeply strange about that thought. James makes a note. Doesn’t look up. Reads one holoscreen before adding it a cascade of screens that apparently some internal order. Moves on. Keith spends another couple of minutes watching as James consults random documents and pecks at his datapad (he’s got an odd three fingered method that seems like it would take forever, but somehow line after line appears as Keith watches) before Keith decides he can’t tolerate any more of this.

He reaches around James to drag one of the holoscreens over, ignoring James’ put-upon sigh, and flips through it. “Are these the blueprints for that one art museum?”

“Please be more specific, hotshot. There are a number of museums.”

Keith makes a face that James blithely ignores. “You know the one I mean. The famous one in New York everyone was all freaked out about.”

James raises one slow, impossibly judgmental eyebrow. “You mean the Met? As in, the ‘Metropolitan Museum of Art’? As in, one of the few museums to manage to save most of their collection from destruction by Sendak? _That_ art museum?”

Keith eyes James for a long moment, convinced that he’s being melodramatic but not entirely certain how to call him out on it without James using it as new way to embarrass Keith. “Yes,” he says finally. “That one. Why do you have the blueprints for that art museum?”

“Allura has had an idea for a crazy ass plan that is going to guarantee Serrano snipes my ass from over a mile away,” James says with something like a wry smile twisting his lips. They stare at each for a moment before James blows out a slow breath like he’s counting out the seconds and then deflates in his chair. “She’s got it into her head that she can bait Udina into a trap.”

Keith thinks about this. He thinks about the particular hateful gleam the admiral’s eyes get any time Allura’s name is mentioned. He thinks about how he tries, over and over, to send Allura to remote corners of the globe, underdefended and vulnerable. He thinks about the way the man’s knuckles go white every time she walks away with yet another settlement, refugee camp, city half way in love with her and her gentle conviction. He thinks about the way Allura’s chin goes up any time she senses a challenge.

He nods slowly. “That could work.”

James flings his hands in the air. “Great! Grand! Serrano is going to kill us both.”

Keith shakes his head. “Not if its Allura’s idea.” Because while Keith does not understand a single thing that goes through Lance’s flighty, trivial, petty head, he _does_ know that if Allura said ‘jump’ Lance would be in the air before she finished the word. “He’ll never tell her ‘no’ about anything.”

“So, you aren’t completely oblivious,” James says in random non-sequitur. “That’s good to know. It’s reassuring, in a perverse sort of way, that you aren’t a complete idiot, you’re just sort of _selectively_ an idiot.”

There’s a level of bitterness in James’ voice that Keith doesn’t think he warrants. James watches him for a little while longer, but when Keith can’t figure out how to express any of the things he’s thinking (feeling), James rolls his eyes and pulls the holoscreen with the blueprints back over to himself. Keith watches as James flips up another screen, a fast-moving chat of some kind, and goes right back to ignoring him. Keith sighs. He didn’t want to have this conversation, or at least didn’t want to have it in this manner, but he’s got a bad feeling if he lets it fester James will make him pay for it. 

“We need to talk.”

If he hadn’t been watching James for the tiniest tell he would have missed the way those words make James twitch before he says, calm and nonchalant as anything: “The four most terrifying words known to the human race.”

There’s no sensible response to that bit of sarcasm so Keith ignores it. “We need to talk so that, uh,” he trips over himself, his tongue suddenly clumsy in his mouth, “our working relationship isn’t damaged.”

That’s a thing he’s almost certain he’s heard other people say in situations like this. He’d never really expected to find himself in a situation where such phrases were necessary, but here he is. And. Well. It’s a thing that people say. (It’s a thing he’s terrified of one day hearing Shiro say.) James looks up at that. Stares at the far wall. Slowly mouths the words to himself and then nods, slow, as his expression twisted into something that Keith doesn’t understand but instinctively knows means nothing good.

“Well, then,” James says softly. “Let’s just,” James makes a little hand gesture he clearly thinks conveys something and smiles that smile that makes Keith feel like someone has taken daggers to his ribs, “not and say we did? For the good of our ‘working relationship’.”

“Not talk about it?” Something intrinsic to his soul recoils from the thought. 

“Those are the words I just emitted from my mouth. Yes. Unless there’s some sort of localized audial distortion occurring of which I was not aware.”

Keith feels like he has to physically bite back a snarl. James’ new found talent for making a _joke_ out of things that feel like they are going to rip Keith’s heart to shreds is not a welcome one. “Are you just going to … ignore what happened?”

James flips the holoscreen with the blueprints of the Met on it back around and glares at it. “Generally, when someone has a screaming mental breakdown in front of you, the polite thing is to pretend it didn’t happen and move on. Not,” and James’ expression twists into something far more bitter than Keith thinks James intends to reveal, “pick it apart until you can be collegial colleagues yet again.”

“So, you’re just going to act like nothing _at all_ happened?” Something vile and twisting curls in Keith’s guts like a serpent trying to wiggle its way out of his skin. He feels cold. Clammy. Like he’s going into shock. “Like we didn’t,” Keith doesn’t know how to finish that sentence, “um.”

“Exactly. Like we didn’t _um_. That is, indeed, my current plan, yes. And, no, you do not have a better one. Honestly, with your current track record of planning, I think it best you just quit while you’re ahead.”

Keith can’t breathe. An emotion he doesn’t have a word for reaches up and strangles him as neatly as a fist around his windpipe. “ _Why?_ ”

Now James does look at him, eyes dark with an emotion Keith doesn’t dare guess at, and slowly tilts his head to the side as his eyes narrow into thoughtful slits. 

“First, because I don’t know about you, hotshot, but when I have shrieking, crying meltdown I need a little time to process afterwards and my processing time was interrupted by assassins. You may have noticed that being a _little_ bit distracting. And second, our ‘working relationship’,” James’ amused expression is nearly venomous, “has never been particularly conducive to talking and you’re not presenting any winning argument as to why that should change, and third, ” James leans back and closes his eyes. For a moment he looks almost … vulnerable. “I’m not the one you need to talk to,” he says without opening his eyes, “am I?”

“What?” Keith doesn’t know what the fuck to make out of that sentence. “Who else would I talk to about”—he gestures between them helplessly—“this? Nadia?”

The look James gives him starts out at baffled and then slowly slides into horrified as Keith watches him turn the idea over in his head. “Good god,” James says faintly, “do _not_ do that. Neither of us would survive.”

Keith snorts.

James rubs his face with both hands. “How are you this dense?” He asks. Keith doesn’t think the question is actually directed at him and keeps his mouth shut. James drops his hands and eyes him for a little bit. “Captain Shirogane,” he says flatly like he didn’t notice Keith’s full body jerk at the mention of Shiro when Keith knows for a fact he did. “You need to get your shit sorted there. Not that yesterday wasn’t fun and all—between the waking up from a medical coma, mental breakdown and assassins, that is—but maybe apply the brakes a little, hotshot, and figure out what you really want.”

The twisting chill slides down Keith’s spine. He has a bad feeling that he knows where this conversation is going to go—he can see it like a cliff face, and he doesn’t know how he’s going to ride out that drop—and wishes he was clever enough to head James off, distract him somehow, before James run them both right off the road. But he isn’t. He can only listen in mute horror as James keeps talking.

“Because I know, now at least, that you’ve got even less capacity for forward planning than _Lance_ ”—Keith makes an offended noise before he can stop himself. James shoots him a judgmental side-eye—“yeah, get better about that if you don’t like the comparison. At least Serrano knows when to delegate around his weak points.” They glare at each other before James sighs again. “Look. You have no idea what the fuck is going on inside your head—no, don’t argue with me when I’m right—and I have the emotional capacity of a rock right now and that comparison might be insulting to rocks.”

Keith swallows around the bile that wants to climb up his throat. “You want me to choose?” James cocks an eyebrow at him. “Between you and Shiro?”

Because that’s not a thing Keith thinks he can do. He doesn’t know how to let go of all the history and weight and … whatever the fuck it is that burns between them like a forest fire. He might have a better chance at cutting off his own arm. And Shiro. Well. He’s tried to cut out Shiro before and that had been like cutting out his own heart. He’s not doing that again.

Some of what he’s feeling must show on his face because James sighs and bounces a bit of crumpled paper off Keith’s forehead. “Polyamory is a thing, hotshot.” James rubs at his temples, but he looks less annoyed than just exasperated and amused. Affectionate, if Keith lets himself be hopeful. “And ultimatums like that have a nasty habit of blowing up. I’m not telling you to choose. I’m telling you to sort yourself out.”

Keith eyes him. “What do you know about polyamory?”

“Have you seen my team?” James asks in a voice as dry as dust. “Specially, Nadia. And/or Lance.”

There’s a thought derails Keith because, what? He must have misheard. “Lance?”

“Lance. Poly. Yes,” James says obnoxiously slow as if Keith’d been hit by a concussive grenade. “Or he will be if he can figure out shit between himself and Ryan.”

“But Allura—”

“Sit in a room with Ryan and Allura for longer than thirty seconds and you’ll see what I mean.”

Keith sits on the edge of James’ little nightstand-turned-desk and stares at him. “Really?”

James grins. It transforms his face into something young and boyish and inviting. Keith is suddenly reminded of the way everyone had fallen into James’ orbit in school, at the Garrison, and now he thinks he maybe understands why. Maybe.

“She gets all flustered and pink around him.” Keith can feel his eyebrows try to join his hairline. Surprised isn’t exactly the right word, because he has eyes and has in fact been in the same room as Ryan Kinkade who seems to exclude the sort of effortless confidence and grace that would be arrogance on anyone else. The sort of ease with himself that Keith would, honestly, kill to possess. But. _Allura_. James seems to know what he’s thinks because James’ knowing grin gets wider. “He calls her ‘baby girl’ and she’s all sweetness for him. Shit is adorable.”

“And Lance isn’t jealous?”

“Lance hasn’t quite figured out for himself that he wants to climb Ryan like a tree, but he’s getting there. I mean, he’s all but moved into Ryan’s quarters and spends a solid ninety percent of his time plastered to Ryan’s side.”

“Huh.” Keith crosses his arms and stares at James, gobsmacked. There is no other word for the feeling. “ _Huh_.”

“If they don’t sort themselves out by the end of our little pleasure cruise, I owe Nadia twenty bucks and I have never lost a bet with her yet.” James sounds incredibly smug. As if the possibility of Allura and Lance _and_ Ryan (his mind trips over that, provides other relationships where the switch from pair to triad might solve a lot of difficulties, and he has to forcibly derail that line of thought before it gets him into trouble) is something that he, James, had personal control over.

“They’re, uh,” Keith doesn’t even know how to articulate the questions ping-ponging around the inside of his skull. “Huh.”

James gives him a judgmental look like he’s a special kind of idiot. “You’re half-Galra. How is the entire idea of someone being poly blowing your mind this much?”

Keith startles and then glares. It sounds like James has been doing research. He knows for a fact that once James starts on a research binge, he is terrifyingly thorough. Keith squirms, both nervous and suddenly uncomfortably turned on, at the idea of what _else_ James might have discovered in his research.

“I don’t, what do you… um,” Keith stutters. The way James is studying him, entirely too knowing for Keith’s mental well-being, reminds him suddenly of their school days when James had known the answer to a question and was trying to drill it into Keith’s head through the sheer force of his gaze. “What?”

James slaps a hand to his face and drags it half way down. “Oh my god. You are an idiot.”

“You say this so often it no longer has any meaning.”

James buries his face in both hands and groans. “Oh my _god_. Galra _quadrant_ , you blithering idiot. How do you manage to be this self-unaware?”

He says this like it’s supposed to explain anything about anything. “That doesn’t actually explain anything.” Keith tells him while James continues to eye him like he’s a particularly stupid dog that’s shit on the living room rug. “Most of us failed telepathy one-oh-one.”

“First, when did you learn to be sassy?” James asks with every indication this is a serious question. “And second, hasn’t anyone on the Galra side of your family tree given you the birds and the bees talk? Because I refuse that particular honor. Go pester your terrifying assassin mother.”

Keith considers him for a long moment until James squirms—a fact that fills Keith with a deep and abiding delight because for the first time in forever _he_ has gotten the better of _James_ in a staring match—and then shrugs. “Well. If you don’t know then I guess you just don’t know.”

James flings a datapad at his head which Keith catches neatly and places gently on the table. He cocks his head to the side slowly the way he’s seen Lance do to annoying officers and is rewarded by James audibly grinding his teeth.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” James grinds out. “I do not deserve this.” He looks upwards towards the ceiling as if beseeching the heavens for help. This is gesture is robbed of its drama by the simple fact that they are in space. When he notes this fact, James flips him off. 

“Look,” James says slowly like he’s trying and failing to find some sort of emotional equilibrium. “You don’t ask your kismesis to give you the sex ed talk.”

“My what?” Keith asks. He recognizes that word. It’s something that Kolivan has used that he hasn’t bothered to look up yet since he thought it’d never apply to him. Hearing James use it—hearing James make a claim on him, even one he doesn’t fully understand—sends a thrill through him.

James opens his mouth. Looks at Keith for a moment. Makes an abortive hand gesture before dragging his hand down his face again. “No,” James says in the tone of a man coming to a difficult conclusion. “No. I am not doing this. Get out.”

“You can’t just throw me out.”

“Oh yes, yes I can,” James says while making little shooing gestures with both hands. “My room and thus my rules. Go talk to Shiro and then do the bare minimum basis of research on your own damned biology because the fact that I apparently know more about it than you do is straight up terrifying.” James waves a hand between the two of them with stricken expression. “We should both be terrified by this.”

Keith scoffs. “You don’t know more than me.”

“I think, actually, I’m going to bet that I do,” James replies thoughtfully. “Regardless. Get out before I call your mother for you.”

Keith absconds.

* * *

my-fylgia-is-[redacted] reblogged from Terminally-morbid:

I know now is the time to be sad and respectful and life sucks so much horse cock we are all going to be impregnated by monstrous horse spouge and when the mutated spawn burst forth from our chests they will collectively sing ‘ _fuck the Galra, fuck them forever, amen, amen_ ’

HOWEVER

I found a thing and I desperately needed to share it. 

315 Things The Griffin Brothers Are No Longer Allowed To Do In The United Earth Military Services

You’re welcome.

*

lewd-ducks:

> 3\. Not allowed to threaten anyone with black magic
> 
> 4\. Not allowed to challenge anyone’s disbelief of black magic by asking for hair.

That was Michael, wasn’t it? 

*

Anxietymonkey:

GIVE HIM YOUR HAIR YOU COWARDS

*

ADXIII:

You do know they are all dead, right?

*

Anxietymonkey:

[gif: _a stately black woman points emphatically at the camera while holding a glass of wine. Below her reads the caption_ “I said what I said.”]

*

Zekxtan:

19\. May not call anyone in my chain of command immoral, untrustworthy, lying slime. Even if I’m right.

Oh mood

*

solarislion:

43\. Camouflage body paint is not a uniform.

Which one did this? I need to know

*

flowersforAres:

screw that, which one did this:

45\. I am not allowed to “Go to Bragg boulevard and shake daddy’s little money maker for twenties stuffed into my undies”.

And is there footage????

*

roundab00t:

> 124\. Two drink limit does not mean first and last.
> 
> 125\. Two drink limit does not mean two kinds of drinks.
> 
> 126\. Two drink limit does not mean the drinks can be as large as I like.
> 
> 127\. “No Drinking Of Alcoholic Beverages” does not imply that a Jack Daniel’s ® IV is acceptable.

this was James, wasn’t it?

and this:

130\. “I’m drunk” is a bad answer to any question posed by my commander.

these too:

137\. Should not show up at the front gate wearing part of a Galra uniform, messily drunk.

138\. Even if someone from ‘Team Voltron’ did it first.

*

Sequence-fairy:

Boy liked to drink

*

killingtime:

Did you see his command? It’s a wonder he wasn’t drunk more often

*

tinybutfierce:

Is no one going to address the OP’s extended metaphor?

OP, are you okay?

*

Terminally-Morbid

No.

3,482 notes  
Tagged: #LT James Griffin, #The Griffin List, #i miss them, #that family is like the epitome of tragedy

* * *

Lance wakes up slow. He feels like someone has taken his head, popped it open the top like a cracker jack box, and then stuffed it full of cotton balls. Everything is low-grade pain and stuffiness. Like a hang-over, but without the fun night beforehand. 

“ _Eungh_ ,” he says eloquently to express his displeasure.

Someone warm and soft and with a cloud of silver-white hair makes a deeply rude noise next to him before slapping ineffectually at his head. He catches Allura’s hand and kisses each of the knuckles. She snorts again in her sleep, does a full body stretch, and then goes slack—back to being dead asleep in the space of seconds. Lance’s heart feels over full and squishy with hopeless affection.

“You managed to drug yourself while trying to knock out Jamie,” comes Ryan’s voice somewhere off to the left of him. “How did you manage that one again?”

“Talent,” Lance says. His voice is a gross sandpaper rasp of sound. “Also had to drink some of it to sell things to Jamie but his ass has developed a resistance to zalephon—because of fucking course he has—so I knocked myself out and he’s probably back to writing reports.”

Ryan makes a low, thoughtful sound. “I sicced Kogane on him.”

Lance makes a face before he can think about it. James and Keith were a rolling boil that threatened to bubble over at the least provocation and that’s a thought that Lance really just does not want to follow. The entire _thing_ between Keith and Jamie seems like a thing that will eventually lead to blood, screaming, and explosions. “If Keith hurts him,” Lance rasps thoughtfully, “I’m going to kill him.”

“Loyal.”

Lance makes an indistinct noise. It feels like the inside of his head is scrambled, making it difficult to follow whatever line of thought Ryan’s working his way towards. Honestly, he should know better than to try sneaky tricks on Jamie because they never work out well from him, but he keeps doing it like an overconfident idiot. He flops a hand in what he thinks is Ryan’s general direction. Ryan lets him do this for a few moments before sighing and catching his hand. 

“I am loyal,” Lance tells him. Because he is. It’s a defining characteristic for him—only his loyalty tended to operate a little differently than most people expected. “Very loyal.”

“And with a chip on your shoulder the size of Omaha.”

“That’s very specific. Why Omaha?”

“Have you ever been to Omaha?” Ryan asks. “If you had, you’d know better than to ask that question.”

Lance doesn’t think that explains anything about anything but the left over zalephon fuzziness leaves him without the necessary willpower to really pursue that particular rabbit hole. He tries not to look at Ryan because even on his best days, staring at Ryan’s stupid handsome face and gorgeous eyes scatters his thoughts. (While looking at Allura focuses him like a blade on whetstone. It’s a difference he tries not to investigate too closely.) He stares up at the ceiling thoughtfully. 

This is not Jamie’s tidy little room-slash-office space. This is somewhere else entirely that he doesn’t know. He _hates_ getting moved around when he’s unconscious. 

“Why did you move me?” He grimaces as the petulant whine his voice takes. He hadn’t been trying for whiny, but apparently, he’s just stuck in that mode until the rest of his brain comes back online.

“Baby girl was all fussy until we returned you to her,” Ryan says like this makes any sort of sense. It takes Lance far longer than he’d really like to admit to connect the dots between ‘Allura’ and ‘baby girl.’ He blinks. A lightbulb is trying to turn itself on inside of his head, but the logical ends refuse to meet up, so the thought keeps sparking like a faulty electrical current. 

“Fussy?”

“Like a toddler who couldn’t find her favorite teddy bear, is what Nadia said,” Ryan comments in a tone that seems entirely too light for the comment. Lance turns his head, the movement disproportionately difficult, to stare at Ryan’s austere profile. Ryan’s dark eyes flicker over him and Allura for a moment before Ryan goes back to studying some report. It strikes Lance suddenly, with surprising force, that he’s too far away to touch and this is a thing which Lance cannot abide.

“Come here,” he says as he strains his fingertips to touch. Lance can just barely pluck at the edges of Ryan’s uniform jacket. He doesn’t know why Ryan’s decided, when they are official dead and can wear whatever the fuck they please, to wear that ugly ass cadet’s uniform that he far outranks. Ryan’s probably the only one who could make the hideous orange look good, but the entire thing seems like one more injury to Lance’s mangled pride. “Get _over_ here.”

“Your baby girl will protest.”

“She’s not _my_ baby girl,” Lance tells him. This seems important for Ryan to understand. It’s small, but it’s critical and somehow Ryan’s managed to miss that detail. “She doesn’t let _me_ call her that. Lots of other things, but not that.”

Ryan makes a disagreeing sound low in his throat, but he’s interrupted by Allura suddenly sitting up and reaching for him over Lance’s chest. “Come here,” she says, soft. “Stop being stubborn.”

“Baby girl,” Ryan says, and it sounds like a plea and a protest all at once. Lance doesn’t know why he’s holding himself apart from them—almost close enough for their fingers to brush, but not quite—and Lance hates it.

Lance leverages himself into a sloppy seat against the headboard with Allura leaning heavily against his side. She sighs as he gets them settled. Her expression a mirror of his own confused frustration. Ryan watches them with a neutral expression that still manages to reveal more than Lance thinks Ryan intends. There’s a waiting sort of tension that extends between them and Lance has had quite enough of that tremulous, emotional bullshit from watching Keith and Captain Shirogane (and now he’s starting to sound like Jamie inside his own head, greaaaat) dance around each other. Fuck the pining nonsense for action heroes with more nobility than sense. He’s unlikely to live to see his next birthday, he doesn’t have _time_ for tortured pining anymore.

“You know,” Lance says carefully—makes sure he says it slow enough to capture Ryan’s complete and undivided attention, “you are the only one who gets away with calling her that.”

Allura nods emphatically next to him. Ryan continues to give them a neutral look that’s getting a little old with its deep levels of skepticism. Lance looks at Allura and she looks back. He doesn’t know how they come to the same decision at the same time, only that they do.

Ryan doesn’t squawk or flail when they grab him. Just sighs. Lance’d almost feel spiteful at how graceful Ryan remains even as he’s getting hauled into a narrow cot, but he’s got a lot of experience with Ryan’s near inhuman grace. Honestly? At this point it just puts a bolt of heat straight through him when Ryan manages to fall into their laps like he’s been posed there. Ryan blinks up at them, slow and lazy, as they pin him down with gentle hands.

“Caught you,” Allura laughs and Lance grins.

“It’s not like he put up much fight,” Lance notes just for the way it makes Allura stick her tongue out at him. Ryan catches his fingers as he tries to undo the hideous orange uniform. He’s always hated the cadet uniform, but right now having Ryan wearing it feels like a personal affront. “Stop that,” Lance tells him as Ryan tries to keep his hands still, “I think we’ve been waiting for the long enough.”

There’s a moment when it looks like Ryan’s going to argue with them, but Allura swoops down to pepper his face with delicate kisses. Ryan sighs again, looking conflicted. When she pulls away, pleased with herself, Lance leans down to kiss him, too. It feels like a resolution. Like the answer to a question he hadn’t even known he’s been asking.

“If you tell me this is a bad idea,” Allura says while Ryan stares up at them with the expression of a man who isn’t entirely sure how he’s ended up in this position and not entirely certain he wants out. “I will set you on fire.”

“I mean,” Lance says while Allura glowers at him, “it is a bad idea”—Allura scoffs loudly—“for him. Hate to say it, but we’re kinda damaged goods. Just a little.” Allura glares at him as Ryan starts to laugh softly. Lance holds up a hand and starts ticking off fingers. “I mean, one, you’re a ten-thousand-year-old genocide survivor with some _spectacular_ anger issues. Two, we both are the chosen pilots of semi-sentient robot lions with a shaky grasp on mortal concepts like, you know, mercy and honestly I’m a little bit concerned that that’s psychological contagious,”—Lance holds up his thumb and pointer finger and touches them together—”like, just a little bit. Three, we both have really weird and specific PTSD triggers-- _mmph_ ”

The rest of Lance’s list trickles from his mind like grains of sand from an hourglass when Ryan snakes up a hand to drag him into one of the best kisses of his life. Though, if put on the stand and asked to testify if it’d been a better than a kiss with Allura, he would _lie_. Lance blinks. Allura looks smug. And Ryan sighs again like he’s shouldering the burdens of the world on his shapely shoulders.

“I have been trying to give you two space,” he starts. “You’ve only just figured out your own relationship. You should have spac—"

“Don’t want it,” Lance interrupts before Ryan can really get going on whatever sensible, responsible, self-denying nonsense he’s got lined up.

“Don’t need it,” Allura adds.

“Mostly just want you,” Lance follows up as Allura nods next to him. 

Ryan drops a hand on his face and drags it halfway down with a groan. He peers at them from between his spread fingers. “You two are a menace.”

“Oh,” Lance says excitedly and waves a hand between himself and Allura, “we’re being treated as a _duo_. A matched set! That’s fun.”

Allura wiggles around until she can drag Ryan up between them on the bed rather than leaving him sprawled across their legs and half off the bed. While Lance mourns the loss of Ryan’s weight over him, he does have to admit this is a much better configuration. He plasters himself along Ryan’s back as Allura wiggles into the circle of Ryan’s arms. Lance notes the way Ryan doesn’t really fight them at all, just goes passive and lets them arrange him how they want.

Lance makes short work of Ryan’s jacket while Allura cuddles into Ryan’s spaces, pressing biting kisses along the column of Ryan’s throat. She grins at him over Ryan’s shoulder once Lance gets him stripped of his thin under shirt.

“Baby girl.” 

Lance can’t see what Allura is doing with her hands, but he can guess from the sudden hunger in Ryan’s voice. Her eyes are bright and wicked when she catches his eye as they work to divest Ryan of his pants. Allura rolls him over onto his back as Lance scoots down to deal with Ryan’s boots and all their fussy laces. They leave him in his boxers. That seems like an important concession to his stubbornness and pride. 

“Allura gets a pet name,” Lance says, more thoughtful than whining, as he wiggles his way back up Ryan’s body. He’d try for sultry and seductive, but he’s far too giddy. He bites at ridiculous vee of muscle on Ryan’s low belly and then licks his way up to Ryan’s pecs. He catches one dark nipple between his teeth and tugs, just a little. Ryan’s hand snaps out and tangles in his hair. Lance rolls that sensitive nub of flesh between his teeth before letting it go with an obscene pop. “I should get a pet name.”

“I’m prettier,” Allura tells him before slithering down Ryan’s body in a move Lance is pretty certain no human could replicate. She delicately licks Ryan’s other nipple, all filthy show, before sucking it into her mouth. Ryan buries his other hand in her wild mane and groans. 

“You two”—Ryan’s voice is so low that it could come from the molten core of the Earth and sounds twice as hot—“are going to be the death of me.”

Allura turns her head, lets his hand slide heavy through her curls, to press a kiss to Ryan’s palm. “Wouldn’t let anyone get there first,” she tells him. Lance’d laugh at the line, at the way Ryan’s gaze goes disgusting sweet for them even with lust clouding his expression, at sheer ridiculousness of it all, but the sound can’t get out of his throat around his need to moan.

Lance leans over his chest to kiss Allura, a wet slide of tongues and teeth that’s all performance, while watching from the corner of his eyes how Ryan’s gaze heats to burning. Allura moans into his mouth. Lance shifts so he can plant a hand right over Ryan’s cock only to find Allura’s hand already there, delicate fingers curling around Ryan’s length, and Lance has to close his eyes against the thought of what they must look like together, caught by Ryan’s hands in their hair as they explore his body.

“I should still get a pet name,” Lance pouts before dragging his tongue over Ryan’s nipple. Ryan’s hand in his hair flexes, doesn’t quite pull, just a little tug to remind Lance that he could. Lance stares up Ryan’s body with his best pleading eyes.

Allura bites Lance’s ear and growls just a little. Lance wonders if it’s physically possible to feel your pupils dilate because of lust. There’s probably something wrong with him.

“No,” that’s definitely a pout in her tone, “ _I’m_ his baby.”

There is definitely something wrong with him because Lance’s breath goes short with his arousal at that declaration. He watches how Ryan has to close his eyes at that statement. Feels Ryan tighten his hand in their hair as if suddenly overwhelmed. He knows how to drive this home. Knows how to take Ryan and shove him right off the cliff of lust and wanting as if given a divine revelation.

He cuddles closer to Allura, licks into her mouth as if they’re in a porno, and moans as sweet as he knows how. “But I want to be good for him, too,” he says with his best pouty whine. Allura bites him. Catches his face in both her hands and kisses him as filthy as he’s ever been kissed. He thinks he hears Ryan swear, but it’s distant over the sound of his blood pumping in his veins. Lance watches Ryan from the corner of his eyes as Allura slides her mouth over the sensitive spaces under his jaw. 

“Ryan,” he whimpers, playing entirely unfair, “tell us how to be good?”

Later, Lance is going to be seven kinds of smug about the way Ryan gives a full-body shudder, eyes slamming shut as arousal sweeps through him like a sudden riptide, and his hands fist, mean, in their hair. Allura gasps. Lance groans. And Ryan drags them down to where his cock has started to leave a wet spot at the top of his boxers. 

Lance nuzzles gently against the clothed outline of Ryan’s cock. When Allura figures out how to kiss him around that enticing girth it might just be the hottest thing that has ever happened to him.

“Good, like tha—"

A bright and peppy chiming interrupts whatever Ryan had been about to say (his voice already delightfully rasping and full of gravel) and they have a half second to blink at each other before Pidge’s voice invades a space where she absolutely is not wanted.

“All right, stop playing with your shameful bits and attend to my summons,” Pidge says in the general manner of someone who has no idea what they might be interrupting and absolutely does not give a fuck. “Because I have figured out our mission plan, should you choose to accept it—spoiler alert! You will—and I am calling a general meeting.”

Ryan has let go of them to rub both hands over his face like this will somehow reset things. 

Lance groans, no longer the happy sexy-times sound, and lets his forehead thump against Ryan’s hip.

“We could ignore her,” Allura suggests thoughtfully.

Ryan makes an interested noise.

“No,” Lance grumbles. “With the way she needs to redeem herself or whatever, she’ll come hunt us down and none of us want that.”

Allura shoves his shoulder and scowls at him. “Entirely your fault,” she says. “You’re the one who had to go rub her nose in all her mistakes. You could have just let her continue along her blissfully ignorant ways. But no. You had to pitch a temper tantrum and now she’s going to be on a rampage to prove herself.”

Lance hides his face in Ryan’s low belly and whines.

* * *

sequence-fairy reblogged from that’s-what-sidhe-said:

roundab00t posted:

I’m feeling angsty so I went through Hunk’s cooking channel and discovered two (2) things. First, you can spend about two days doing nothing but watching all of his shows back to back and not get all the way through them. which. honestly. _b l e s s_. and second, he seems to have taken trying to teach Shiro how to cook as a personal mission from god and the results are hilarious. 

I present you all with my favorite episodes (not in order) in case anyone else needs to watch a gorgeous, highly competent man obliterate a kitchen in under thirty minutes.

Hunk tries to teach Shiro how to make cupcakes  
[thumbnail: _Somehow Shiro has bundled himself into an adorable mid-century style apron. It has ruffles. It is pastel. It is decorated with tiny little cupcakes. It serves to highlight the fact that the man is six foot two with shoulders like a line backer and the slender waist of professional dancer. Shiro is frowning at a bowl full of batter with the expression of a man who has been presented a particularly complex math problem to solve. A word problem. In a foreign language. Perhaps multiple foreign languages._ ]

Hunk decides baking is a dangerous proposition: stir fry is fool proof, right? Wrong.  
[thumbnail: _Shiro is back in a ruffled apron. This one is decorated with little pink spatulas. It has a larger heart sewn on it as a pocket. Hunk has the knuckles of one hand pressed against his mouth as he stares at a blackened, smoking wok. Shiro looks abashed._ ]

Hunk decides simpler is better. What is most simple? Soup.  
[thumbnail: _Shiro is in a different pastel, tailored apron. This one decorated by cheerful bowls of ramen all long its ruffled hem. It is painfully cute. The look is somewhat ruined by the splash of soup dripping all along the front. It’s difficult to tell what Shiro had been attempting to make at the beginning, but the soup is now a very even—and unappetizing—brown. Hunk has his eyes closed with the expression of a man praying for strength._ ]

Hunk gives up on cooking. Shiro can’t fucking up chopping, can he? Spoiler: He can.  
[thumbnail: _Shiro wears yet another apron. This one a very pretty blue with little carrot sticks picked out in glitter. It matches the bit of carrot stuck in his hair, splattered along the counters, and generally everywhere except the food processor. Hunk has his head in both hands._.]

*

New-century-confluence:

Is he cursed? Like. This is some sort of very specific curse, that’s what this is. 

*

les-biene:

Hunk is clearly contemplating exorcising his kitchen, that’s for sure.

*

bbtree:

he is trying his best and no one should judge him.

4,908 notes  
Tagged: #CMDR Takashi Shirogane, #Tsuyoshi ‘Hunk’ Garrett, #he’s trying, #so is Hunk, #and still he manages to do better in a kitchen than Sal

* * *

Shiro blinks as Allura, Lance, and Ryan Kinkaide all file into the meeting room, look around and then fix Pidge with matching glares that should, if through sheer intensity, incinerate their resident tiny genius on the spot. Pidge, being Pidge, give no indication that she notices them or their displeasure. Instead she’s seems wholly committed to an extended argument with Slav, version 324, and that’s a thing that Shiro has literally negative desire to interfere with. 

He finds a chair around the table next to the person most likely to know what’s going on and give him a straight answer about it. Colleen shoots him an amused sort of smirk as he settles in next to her.

“What’s going on?” He asks quietly. It’s not having whispered side-bar conferences when both of the participants are adults, right? Right.

“I think my darling daughter has just found a new and exciting way of getting into her teammate’s bad books,” Colleen comments with every indication of amusement. “I don’t know how she managed to grow up so oblivious.”

“Dad’s fault,” Matt says promptly as he slouches into a seat next to his mother. His braid is a mess and he’s got sleep marks all up one side of his face. “Thank whatever gods are listening that that gene skipped me.”

“Not actually what I was asking about,” Shiro says, but gives up on getting any sort of actual information out of the mother-son pair. He’s known them long enough to know when they are willing to divulge information and when they are just going to run him around for their own amusement.

He listens with half and ear as the Holt mother-son duo devolve into an increasingly inaccessible conversation and watches as people slowly trickle into the conference room.

Nadia and Veronica are seated across from him, apparently reviewing something on a datapad. Veronica gives him a regal head nod of recognition while Nadia waves at him, large and excessively performative, before going back to whatever it is that has captured their attention.

Lieutenant James Griffin walks in, spots Shiro and promptly gives Shiro a salute that is impressively obnoxious in its military perfection. Shiro bites back the urge to sign and nods his acknowledgement. As much as he may occasionally day dream about shoving Griffin out an unattended airlock, there’s no reason to actually be rude. Something in Griffin’s expression, a sort of amused smugness, suggests he knows exactly what Shiro is thinking. Shiro’d thought he was past these sorts of tests of his patience, but apparently not.

Griffin settles into a seat on the other side of the table with just enough show to make it clear the seating choses are quite deliberate, before making a little ‘gimme’ gesture at Nadia, who scowls. When Griffin makes a hand gesture that encompasses the Lance, Allura, and Kinkaide configuration, Nadia’s scowl deepens but she smacks down a twenty chit into James’ waiting palm. Lance notices and immediately bounces a coaster off Griffin’s head. Allura just laughs and plucks the coaster out of the air, neat as anything, when Griffin sends it winging back at Lance.

There’s an easy comfort between them that makes Shiro wonder.

“Oh,” Matt comments in delight. “Jamie bet on that one.”

“And won,” his mother notes, equally amused. 

“Are we surprised?” Matt asks his mother while Shiro gives up trying to understand anything going on between the Holts. At this point being vaguely confused about their self-referential conversations, full of allusions to esoteric in-jokes and sources of gossip only available to the two them, is a familiar feeling. Shiro wonders if he should be worried that he finds it comforting.

Keith slides into the seat next to Shiro. “Did Pidge say anything to you?” He asks quietly. Shiro blinks at the sudden intensity of Keith’s gaze. “Besides the, um.”

“Singularly rude summons?” Colleen interjects. She glowers at her eldest who gives her a sunny smile in return. “Stop setting your sister up like this, Matthew, I do know when you are behind things when your baby sister is being particularly awkward. And I believe we are all waiting in breathless anticipation.” She says the last to Keith, who squirms, just a little, under her steady regard. 

Hunk drops into a chair next to Keith and scrubs at his face. “I was almost asleep,” he complains. “Almost. I hate everyone here.”

“No, you don’t,” Keith says with surprising confidence. And affection. 

“Yes, I really, really do.”

“Don’t.”

“ _Do_.”

Keith laughs as Hunk leans forward to bury his face in his folded arms, still grumbling. 

Shiro can’t help the way his eyebrows wing upward towards his hairline at the exchange. He shares a look with Matt, who looks both unholy delighted and curious. A combination that never works in Keith’s favor.

Keith is saved from whatever interrogation Matt has brewing by Coran swanning into the room, arms full of a mechanical contraption that Shiro is pretty certain has been cobbled together from the bits and bobs of the Atlas’ engineering room scrap pile. Coran looks a little manic, like he’s currently fueled by excessive amounts of caffeine and jittery with it. Ina follows after him wearing a deeply skeptical expression.

Shiro notes the way Ina settles into a chair next to Coran and then, hands moving like birds taking flight, makes a series of gestures at Lieutenant Griffin. He’s startled when it’s not Griffin who responds, but Lance, his slender hands moving through the signs with surprising confidence. Whatever silent, secret conversation that springs up between them ends as quickly as it had started. 

All of the MFEs sit back in their seats, frowning thoughtfully at the device.

Coran sets the device down in the middle of the table with a solid _thunk_. Pidge breaks off her on-going argument with Slav 324 and scowls at mess of metal and circuitry. “Is that it?” Pidge asks. She looks like she’s torn between sneering and poking at the hulking metal with a stick. “Really?

“Indeed, number five!” Coran says in a tone that Shiro has, at this point, been trained to treat with sort of high caution of a bomb squad entering a highly volatile situation. Coran pats the device fondly. “The first and only Blink Drive!”

Ina’s hands move again, and Lance noticeably chokes back a laugh. 

Pidge scowls.

“Ina’s right,” Griffin says before Pidge can say something and potentially set off the powder keg of Lance’s temper. “That’s not going to survive a trade show demonstration.”

“It doesn’t have to,” Pidge says with surprising confidence. “We just need to get it into the trade show long enough to catch the Blue Suns’ equipment buyer’s attention.”

“The buyer that no one has ever met, seen, and whose personal information the Suns’ keep under a deeper ICE than even their client database?” Griffin asks with that little eyebrow arch that suggests that he thinks someone is tilting at windmills.

Griffin sits in the middle of his team, flanked by Nadia and Ryan with Lance plastered up against as much of Ryan’s side as he can manage in the bulky conference room chairs, fingers tangled with Allura’s. Ina’s positioned between that group and where Coran spreads hastily sketched blueprints across the length of the table. An obvious, physical bridge. Periodically, Ina’s pale little hands flash like startled birds and one of the MFE’s responds. It’s been a while since Shiro’s seen UESL, but he recognizes bits of words as their hands move. 

There’s something in the way that Griffin sits surround by his team that grates at Shiro. He realizes, with a nasty jolt, that they sit in a tight configuration in complete opposition to the paladins. The MFEs (and Lance and Allura) form a tight circuit completed by their own secret language while the paladins sit fragmented and fractured with obvious breaks in their ability to communicate.

He sits back and lets the conversation flow around him. The back and forth of hashing out something that might, if someone was very charitable, be considered a plan starts between the two groups. 

Matt eyes him suspiciously as Shiro declines to intervene, even when Keith starts to vibrate with suppressed irritation next to him, as Griffin gets increasingly sarcastic. There’s something in the way the MFE team (and Lance and Allura) interact that he hasn’t quite put his finger on that worries him.

It takes him longer than he might like, a solid twenty minutes of watching and listening, to realize that they trust each other implicitly, completely. A trust built upon a complete knowledge of each other’s abilities—brutal assessments of skills and talents with no false bravado or arrogance—a trust that the paladins clearly did not share.

“No,” Nadia says shortly, her effervescing personality fizzling away to reveal the steel core underneath, “You put Lance in the key sniper position because he can make a shot from over 2,000 kilometers away. Easy.”

“Well,” Lance says with a wince. “Not _easy_ , but yeah I could make it.”

Hunk and Pidge look skeptical. Shiro blinks in surprise. That is not how he would have guessed that conversation would go.

“Problem?” Colleen whispers in his ear.

He spares her a look and sighs. “Yeah, maybe.”


End file.
